<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Modernities Midas Touch by RetroFrost35</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27520090">Modernities Midas Touch</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroFrost35/pseuds/RetroFrost35'>RetroFrost35</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Dimension Travel, Gen, Original Character(s), eidetic memory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 05:15:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>57,540</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27520090</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroFrost35/pseuds/RetroFrost35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1916, a British Steamer and German U-Boat disappear within the fabled Bermuda Triangle. 100 years later a highschooler disappears from their sleepy suburbs. Modernity brings both salvation and suffering, what effect will these modern people on the denizens of the Five Nations? OC-Insert Relevant characters will be added to description later. Currently, M-Rated for language</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Preceding Authors Note: This segment will provide the inciting event that will be the Point of Divergence from the regular Naruto canon. However, these changes will not manifest until the protagonist sets them in motion thus leaving the full Naruto Canon intact until the changes made by the protagonist directly affect. Please enjoy, and thank you for taking the time to read this work of mine. I hope to meet and exceed whatever expectations I create.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>---<br/>
<b>October 14th 2:23am Local Time, 1916</b><br/>
<b>Bermuda Triangle</b><br/>
<b>Aboard SS Fairfield</b></p>
<p>Captain Charles White frowned as he took stock of the updated weather reports that had been flowing in from ships and land-based weather stations. When combined with his own meteorological data taken by his crew one conclusion became clear, the heavy storm his freighter, the SS Fairfield, was about to get a lot worse. His crew and ship were going to take a heavy battering, and to what end? To drag a platoon of Royal Marines, a hold full of supplies and scientific equipment, and a cadre of enigmatic scientists out to the middle of nowhere. Charles was a patriot, but he failed to see the purpose of this little adventure.</p>
<p>Rain battered the bridge of the Fairfield, falling like sheets upon the flat deck of the Fairfield. It was going to be a rough night and it was going to get worse. However, his crew were up to the task of navigating this storm. The question was would they be up to the task of going wherever the scientists directed them? He hoped the answer was a yes.</p>
<p>“Navigator, are we still on course for navigational point A?” Charles queried.</p>
<p>“Yes, Captain,” responded the navigator.</p>
<p>“Excellent, XO you have the conn, hold course,” Charles ordered.</p>
<p>“Yes Captain,” executive officer Mullins responded.</p>
<p>“I’m going to deliver these reports to our guests,” Charles remarked as he scooped up the weather reports and headed for the ladder to the lower decks.</p>
<p>“Maybe it’ll help them find their sanity and let us divert out of this storm?” One of the bridge officers quipped.</p>
<p>“Not bloody likely, they have to get stories for cocktail parties somehow,” A different officer remarked. A course of chuckles echoed through the bridge as Charles descended down into the heart of the ship. The ship swayed as it fought against the growing swells of the storm. </p>
<p>Entering the ward room he was greeted with the site of his pain in the ass guests sitting around a table. Papers covered in numbers and words were strewn across the table as his guests looked over and wrote on them.</p>
<p>“I have the weather reports as requested.” Charles said, holding up the bundle of papers.</p>
<p>“Ah thank you Captain, I’ll take them.” Outstretching a hand was the esteemed Dr. Fowler, Charles offered the documents which Dr. Fowler started to flip through.</p>
<p>“Seems your timetable was correct Professor Hisakawa, can you double check if these numbers change the expected time of the phenomena occurring? Dr. Sobol here are some of the energy estimates you asked for, I presume they fall in life with the prediction? Dr. Labelle, can you pinpoint the phenomena’s occurrence location with this? Dr. Cipriani, help me with fine tuning the model for phenomena?” Dr. Fowler rattled off requests and handed out documents to his team. Charles felt a bit awkward as the scientists ignored his presence as they seemed to get lost in their work and discussions.</p>
<p>Charles managed to lock eyes with the only other person in the room without a PHD. Colonel Bowman, he had intense grey eyes who seemed to stare through Charles, it sent a shiver up his spine.</p>
<p>“Will this really help the war effort?” Charles asked, breaking eye contact.</p>
<p>“That is none of your concern Captain, but yes it will help the war effort if we can accomplish our mission. I will come get you if you are needed,” Colonel Bowman spoked with icy hardness. Apparently being dismissed Charles departed the ward room, a lump of concern growing in his stomach.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>--</p>
<p><b>October 14th 2:40am Local Time, 1916</b><br/>
<b>Bermuda Triangle</b><br/>
<b>Aboard SM UL-10</b></p>
<p>Captain Conrad Bachman squinted as he eyed the meandering merchant ship through his periscope. Why he had been sent to tail this specific merchant ship and not sink it was beyond him. Nevertheless, his boat was here following the SS Fairfield and being battered by the storm just as much as the merchant liner.</p>
<p>“Target is holding its course. Helm, keep on bearing 335,” Conrad ordered.</p>
<p>“Keep on bearing 335 Aye,” echoed the pilot.</p>
<p>“Dr. Hutmacher, could you perhaps shed some light as to why we are out here?” The one stipulation in his orders was that he was to take some scientist aboard and listen to him. So far he had kept his lips sealed, to the surprise of Conrad Dr. Hutmacher answered.</p>
<p>“They are hunting a possible natural phenomena that, if it exists, could provide a way to win the war or at least a decisive advantage. We are here to see if they truly find anything and if they do, make sure they cannot put any use to it.” answered Dr. Hutmacher.</p>
<p>“Sounds like madness to me,” replied Conrad.</p>
<p>“Hopefully it is fanciful madness, however if it is real we must be here to prevent its employment against us, at any cost,” Dr. Hutmacher added darkly.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>----</p>
<p>October 14th 3:45am Local Time, 1916<br/>
<b>Bermuda Triangle</b><br/>
<b>Aboard SS Fairfield</b></p>
<p>Captain White was snapped out of self-reflection by a tap on his shoulder. Spinning around in his chair he found that the Colonel and the scientists were now on his bridge.</p>
<p>“Captain, we believe the Phenomena shall occur shortly. It is advisable that you bring your crew to general quarters.” The stern voice of Colonel advised.</p>
<p>“Why what's going to happen?” Charles asked, the lump in his stomach growing tighter.</p>
<p>“You’ll see,” deflected Colonel Bowman.</p>
<p>“XO, sound general quarters,” Charles ordered.</p>
<p>“Yes captain,” replied the XO. He triggered the knob that rang the general quarters alarm. The distinct “BONG BONG BONG” of the alarm brought all those on the ship to full alertness. Sailors woke from their bunks, rapidly dressed, and then headed towards their action stations. In five minutes the entire ship went to full readiness. </p>
<p>“So what is it we are looking for?” Charles asked.</p>
<p>“You’ll know it when you see it,” Colonel Bowman replied. An uneasy five minutes passed in relative silence as the storm raged around the Fairfield. Charles was just about to ask for clarification when a shout came out from the lookouts on deck.</p>
<p>“Disturbance spotted! Portside! In the clouds!” Screamed a lookout. Charle’s head whipped to his left, his eyes scanning the horizon. He didn’t see anything. His eyes drifted skyward and they locked on what seemed like a glowing ball of light.</p>
<p>“What the fuck?” He mumbled right before a bolt of lighting shot down from the orb and hit the sea below. Another followed after, and another one, and another. Soon lighting was smashing into the sea in a constant cacophony of light and sound. The sky lit up as lighting seemed to race all across the sky towards the ball and forming pillars of light. Clouds began to rush towards the epicenter of the event.</p>
<p>“It’s happening!” Shouted one of the scientists.</p>
<p>A pillar of light spiked down from the sky and impaled the sea. It was a pillar of solid blinding light, it grew to massive proportions.</p>
<p>“The gateway stabilized! The calculations were correct!” The one of the scientists yelled in apparent joy.</p>
<p>“Captain, take us towards the pillar.” The Colonels hand gripped Charles' shoulder in a vice grip.</p>
<p>“W-what?” Charles croaked.</p>
<p>“We must enter into that pillar to find what we came here for,” the Colonels grip tightened.</p>
<p>“Are you mad? That’s insanity! Are you trying to get us all kil-” Charle’s went silent when he saw the gun barrel aimed right between his eyes. Shouts of outrage or fear erupted around him.</p>
<p>“Take us into the pillar yourself, become a hero and a rich man or die and I do it myself.” The colonel’s hand was motionless, his brown eyes staring into Charles own eyes. The choice was horrible, and it was obvious.</p>
<p>“XO, t-take us through the pillar,” his voice shook from fear.</p>
<p>“Yes Captain,” credit to his XO, his voice did not quiver as he guided the SS Fairfield onto a course that intersected with the pillar within a minute.</p>
<p>What in god's name had he gotten himself into? </p>
<p>“Good choice Captain,” the Colonel holstered his gun as he stared into the pillar.</p>
<p>“You’ve killed us all, you know that?” Charles snarled.</p>
<p>“Incorrect Captain, we are going to be hero’s who will bring an end to the war. You’ll soon see,” the Colonel replied.</p>
<p>‘Please God protect me’ prayed Charles as the Fairfield’s bow entered the pillar. His last thoughts before entering the pillar was of his mom and how she would be broken by his death.</p>
<p>---<br/>
<b>October 14th 4:01am Local Time, 1916</b><br/>
<b>Bermuda Triangle</b><br/>
<b>Aboard SM UL-10</b></p>
<p>“It seems we are unlucky Captain Bachman,” Dr. Hutmacher stated with finality.</p>
<p>“So it seems Doctor. Helm change bearing to 305 degrees,” ordered Bachman.</p>
<p>“Change bearing to 305, Aye.” Helm acknowledge before making the course change. The boat heaved as it came inline with the pillar.</p>
<p>“We must stop them,” mused the Doctor.</p>
<p>“We will stop them,” affirmed the Captain. “No matter the cost.” The bow of the UL-10 slipped through the pillar of light.</p>
<p>“May god protect us all.” </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 1: Forced Internship</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Preceding Authors Note: This is our introduction to the protagonist of the story. I will try to keep to a constricted first person perspective with him, though I can probably guarantee some segments from other perspectives might pop up. Anyway, please enjoy.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>October 14th 8:23pm Local Time, 2016<br/>
Woodbury, Minnesota<br/>
Home Stadium of the Woodbury Tigers</b>
</p>
<p>The score was 33-30. They were on the opponents 40. There was 15 seconds on the clock. It was 3rd and 9. They had one timeout. Not an ideal situation, but not a horrible one.</p>
<p>“You hear that freshman?” Someone said to me.</p>
<p>“Huh?” I mumbled out. This earned me a smack on my helmet. </p>
<p>“White Bear Lemon 35 thats the call. Keep your head in the game. Got me?” snarled the QB Jake Peterson. </p>
<p>“Yeah I got it,” I responded. ‘White Bear Lemon 35’ was a play we had run a lot so we knew it could probably get us the 5 yards we needed to try and get the field goal. White stood for a halfback run, Bear signified that the Center and Right Guard would both push forwards while the tight end would flip back and move in behind them to either seal off a hole or block a linebacker. The fullback would then either push up the hole to clear out any remaining linebackers or a safety. That would leave me a clear lane either for a guaranteed 3-5 yards or a lot more depending on what the safeties did. It was an easy way to guarantee a win.</p>
<p>I lined up behind the fullback and waited for the snap. This is when everything went to shit. </p>
<p>“HUT!” Peterson followed this up by fumbling the snap. At the same time their cornerback came crashing down through the unprotected right of the formation. The tight end had already cleared and was pushing into the hole created by the center and right guard</p>
<p>“Shit!” I swore as I rushed up to the right to  deliver a block on the cornerback. He was a 5’7 140lb sophomore, I was a 5’8 170lb freshman. Physics did my talking and I pancaked him on his back. I sprinted out to the flat before turning back to see Peterson had completed a 5 step drop and was looking for someone who was open. I was open.</p>
<p>“Pete!” I waved my hand. His head snapped towards me and within a half second he delivered a perfect spiral pass, right before a defensive tackle took him to the ground. The spiral was pretty, one of his prettier passes as I could remember it.</p>
<p>I snatched the ball out of the air and tucked it, turning up field. I had a linebacker to my left and a safety up a head. Normally, I’d be fucked in this situation, but I’d noticed a tendency of this particular safety. He always overbited on double moves to his right, that was my advantage to not getting wrecked.</p>
<p>I drove up field, the linebacker closing in from my left, and the safety having built up a full head of steam. I made my move. I started to cut right, the safety wasn’t fooled and he held his course. I then reversed left, and held the direction for the tiniest of moments. The safety bit, and he lunged at me, while I reversed direction again. I felt my knee’s scream at the abuse, but they held up.</p>
<p>As a result the safety slammed into his own linebacker taking them both down. Ahead of me was green grass and I bounded in for the touchdown. I spiked the ball, howled like a barbarian, and was tackled by my team in the endzone. The following hour was a blur of yelling, chanting, and dancing. I remembered every detail. </p>
<p>We, the Woodbury Tigers had just won our 7th game in a row. We would be headed to the state championship. It felt good to be a winner. It felt better to be the reason why we won. Eventually, the celebrations dimmed down and we all split off. My parents drove me home. I kept my eyes closed, but I remembered every bump and turn in the path they took.</p>
<p>That was the problem though, I was always remembering things. In fact I remembered everything, from what I ate for breakfast to what I saw in the corner of my eye 3 years, 6 months, 24 days, 8 hours, 45 minutes, and 26 seconds ago. It was a dragonfly on a leaf. I had an utterly perfect memory, every moment of every day I would remember as if it had happened seconds prior. </p>
<p>As it is with most things this had both upsides and downsides. On the upsides school and other things of an academic nature were as simple as a glance. That's not to say I am some sort of supercomputer, I still process things at a more human speed. That means you could flipp 600 pages of a book in front of my eyes, I’d be able to remember every letter from every page, but I’d still need a while to actually internalize what I’d read. It's the difference between having a bunch of pictures with words in them, and actually knowing what those words are saying.</p>
<p>Continuing with the theme of utter unfairness of my existence posing to other people was the fact that it seemed like I had a body that was growing into a 5 star college football recruit ideal.This was good fortune, because my only real dream was getting to play in the NFL. Ironic, having an amazing brain and just taking the only job that will have it smashing into people at high speed.</p>
<p>Eventually, our car rolled up into our driveway and we got out. I got the same congratulations from my parents and sister, that I got when we won our game three weeks ago. </p>
<p>We already had eaten so it was only a short period of time before I professed being tired and trudged up stairs. My room was pitch black, but that was fine. I remembered where everything was so it was simple to change into pajamas. I crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling, re-living the experiences of the day all over again. I enjoyed recapping my days before I would let exhaustion claim me. It would be several hours before my mind would calm down to let my consciousness slip away.</p>
<p>As I was dozing off to sleep, I heard a sound. A sound that didn’t trigger the back of the head deja vu that almost all other sounds did, this was a unique sound. My eyes snapped open, and I shot up in bed. Reversing back my auditory memory, it became clear that it came from my left ear. My head rotated left, towards my window, and I saw something unique. A hovering ball of light, in the middle of my cul-de-sac. I had never seen something like that before, a low-pitch hum was seemingly emanating from the orb.</p>
<p>In a flash I slipped on my slippers and raced down the stairs. Lights came on in my parents and sisters room. I ripped the door open and raced outside. My eye’s soaked up every little detail in the object, every little ripple and change of color. I had to see more.</p>
<p>I ran out into the cul-de-sac. The orb just sat in mid-air hovering and doing nothing besides emit that low humming sound. Something pulled me towards it as I just kept stepping closer and closer until I was under the white orb. It was beautiful.</p>
<p>“Roger!” I heard a voice call out to me, I snapped back to reality and located the sound. It was my parents and sister, they were running out the door of the house. </p>
<p>“Wha-” I began to say back before something happened. A crack emanated from above me, .2 roughly seconds after that a somewhat translucent white light surrounded me. My eyes widened, my family's eyes widened, for the first time I saw a raw primal fear from my family.</p>
<p>.3 seconds after the white light surrounded me it began to brighten dramatically over a second of time. I started to smell ozone in the air. The hairs on my skin tingled. I heard the beginning of a word.</p>
<p>“Rog-!” The light brightened dramatically, my eyes began to shut. Whatever the word was cut-off as a loud boom deafened me. I experienced some sort of shock to other senses, I felt my body shutdown as my mind fell into unconsciousness.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>----<br/>
<b>October 15th? Unknown time, Unknown year<br/>
Unknown location</b></p>
<p>It was a drop of something cold on my face that woke me. My eyes shot open and I leaned up. This earned me several pieces of key information, my body was bruised and sore. I was in a forest, and I had a drop of water fall on me. My clothes were wet. Struggling to my feet I swept my surroundings with my eyes. This earned me more pieces of critical information.</p>
<p>I was not in immediate danger, the forest looked to have really big trees, and it was daytime. I was wearing my slippers, pj pants and t-shirt. I was breathing fine so the atmosphere was not immediately poisonous. All of these facts when taken together with my memories of what had happened had several implications.</p>
<p>“Something” perhaps a divine or higher power, aliens, man made weapon, or other had moved me to this location. This location could range from somewhere on earth, to the afterlife, otherworld or ect. I was in the apparent wilderness with no tools, no proper clothes, and no information. This necessitated the first question of survival, am I in a place where I can expect rescue or must I expect no rescue?  </p>
<p>Well since I was transported by some unknown force to an unknown location, it was likely those who would want to rescue me have no fucking idea where I was. So until information changed I would have to expect no rescue.</p>
<p>“I’m so fucked,” I said to myself. My heart race began to increase along with breathing as I began to panic. I couldn’t panic.</p>
<p>“No No NO! No fucking panicking!” I lied to myself. I was never going to see my parents or sister ever again. I was going to die here. I was fucked fucked fuuuucked capital F Fucked.</p>
<p>I slapped myself, twice. The pain stung my cheeks, but it refocused my mind. Panic would decrease my survival odds dramatically. The key to survival was making it the first hour, then day, then week, then month and so on. Every milestone I hit would increase my odds of not dying a horrible death. My brain buzzed as it searched through all the material I knew to compile a set of rules for survival.</p>
<p>Rule 1. Don’t fucking panic.<br/>
Rule 2. DO NOT PANIC.<br/>
Rule 3. You will survive.<br/>
Rule 4. Be positive.<br/>
Rule 5. Focus on making it to singular milestones.<br/>
Rule 6. Don’t panic</p>
<p>“Okay don’t panic, Do not panic. Not one bit” I repeated to myself.</p>
<p>“How do I survive the first hour?” I asked myself.</p>
<p>“Obvious moron, find a better spot and search for resources.” I smartly responded. I had sticks, rocks, some vegetation that looked familiar though wasn’t a perfect match to anything I remembered and water.</p>
<p>A stream was trickling to the right of me. That was good. Streams mean rivers or lakes, which maybe means habitation.</p>
<p>“Okay, me let's follow the stream.”</p>
<p>“Good idea me, let's do that” So I followed the stream. I followed the stream for a long fucking time. I definitely made it past my first hour and my second hour. All the while my head buzzed as new sights, sounds, and smells were cataloged. It seemed wherever I was was similar to Earth, though there were several unrecognizable plant species and animal calls. This did reduce the odds that I was on Earth which was bad.</p>
<p>It was around hour three that I got thirsty, now if I had some receptacle to boil water in or purify it I would. But I didn’t have those things so I just drank from the stream, some bad gut bacteria would take a lot longer to kill me than dehydration so it was a trade-off worth making. </p>
<p>I kept following the stream, around hour 6 I came upon a larger creek that the stream fed into. This was good. It was indicative of there being some bigger water system that would lead me to people, if I got out of this forest. I followed the creek. I walked in silence, partially because I had gotten my panic out of my system for now. It was around hour 10 that darkness started to fall. This was bad. I doubted I’d be able to start a fire using the ole friction method, plus who knows what a fire might attract.</p>
<p>I would be better off sleeping without a fire. So that's what I did. I was tired, cold, hungry, and scared. I was also alive, so I had that going for me. Tomorrow I would walk for half the day, then if I found no habitation would then try and acquire my own food alone with tools. </p>
<p>I found a dry and flat plot of dirt, laid down, and closed my eyes. It was uncomfortable, but I was too tired to care. The sound of running water was a comfort that made me forget just a tiny bit how scared I really was at that moment. Unconsciousness claimed me soon thereafter. </p>
<p>I didn’t dream that night.<br/>
----<br/>
<b>October 16th? Unknown time, Unknown year<br/>
Unknown location</b></p>
<p>Voices snapped me back into the world of the waking. Voices meant people which meant I was rescued. My eyes snapped open to take in the world.</p>
<p>What greeted me that morning was a spear, a spear that was pointing right between my eyes. </p>
<p>A “Huh?” tumbled out of my mouth. That earned me a kick to the stomach, which brought a chorus of laughs and jeers. I was most definitely not saved. Rewinding my memory I picked out several interesting details: The language I was hearing wasn’t english, but rather Japanese though with a unique accent. I was surrounded by at least 3 men, all of whom were armed with wood and metal spears. My legs were tied up by some net held by two of the men on my periphery. Finally, they were definitely a violent group of people. All of these facts had several implications on my future actions.</p>
<p>I kind of knew Japanese, when I first figured out my memory was perfect I shoved as much language learning resources into my skull as quickly as possible. I could understand and write it with time to think about what I was trying to say, but my pronunciation and sentence construction would be childish until I gleaned more from my captors. However, I would be able to communicate and understand them. This would increase my chances of survival dramatically. I just now had to not get murdered by my captors.</p>
<p>“Hello?” I said, wincing at the garbled disaster that came out of my mouth. This earned me another kick and more laughing.</p>
<p>“He speaks like a moron!” Laughed the captor on my left.</p>
<p>“I'm not sure the Boss will have much use for him, why don’t we just kill him now,” the captor holding the spear to my face said. I began to panic, I was immobilized and having a pointy object in my face was not making my mood better</p>
<p>“No, look how big he is. He may be stupid, but we can use him for a human ox or something else.” The captor on my right jeered.</p>
<p>“Aww are ya sure Ryota? We could gut him right now and nobody would ever know.” </p>
<p>“Rules are rules, plus we might be able to get a cut of whatever he’s worth when he’s sold. You're not ruining my pay day with your bloodthirst,” responded my captor who was apparently called Ryota. He also coincidentally was my favorite person at this exact moment, though the future possibility of being a slave or human trafficking victim was not appealing.</p>
<p>“Fine, but you owe me a game tonight,” the captor with the spear pulled it away from my face with a huff. </p>
<p>“Get up you moron”</p>
<p>I looked down to my tied legs and then back up to my captors. They laughed and untied my legs. I got up and with something sharp digging into my back I began to follow the guy named Ryota. I kept quiet, while the guys around continued to talk jovially and make fun of me. My mind raced as I worked through the new facts of my situation</p>
<p>Good news was that I was not dead, bad news was that I might be sold as a slave. Good news was that I could speak the local language, bad news was that I could speak at a level of Lennie Small. Good news was that I could learn it quickly, bad news was it might not be quick enough to get sent off to some deep dark mine. In short, I was still stuck up shit creek without a paddle, but I was getting used to the idea of getting my hands dirty.</p>
<p>Our party weaved through the forest, exiting into a clearing with what seemed to be a small fort right in the middle. I was led up to the fort gates where a bored looking sentry armed with a spear waved us through the open gate. My eyes scanned from side to side picking up numerous but probably useless details. For one thing it was almost a guarantee that they didn't have firearms here, no way would anyone even bother carrying a spear if guns were commonplace. Inside the fort stood numerous buildings seemingly constructed in a vaguely Japanese style, though to be honest I didn’t know jack shit about what even a Japanese style was beyond what I had seen in the movies or textbooks. </p>
<p>I was led into a multi-story building that was in the apparent middle of the fort. We moved past a couple guards at the front of the building who let us pass after my captors explained the situation. Already, I had begun to pick out slight differences between the language these people spoke and what I knew of Japanese from Earth. Tonal shifts, different emphasis placed on words and other minor details were all vacuumed up by ears and mind. I would have to demonstrate some kind of usefulness to not get thrown in mines, and talking like I had the wherewithal of a cow would not help me at all.</p>
<p>We made our way up several flights of stairs before we came to a door with 2 more guards standing at attention to the side of it. Yet again, my captors explained the situation and the guards let us pass through the door. Three men were already in the room, one of them was fat pudgy and was sitting in a chair behind a desk, to his left was a lanky looking guy who was pointing and gesturing at an open book on the desk, and finally was a grim looking fellow with an eye patch leaning on a wall staring at us. The whole situation screamed mafia, though I doubted they’d start speaking italian or threaten me with concrete shoes. I had to bite down a snort at how horrifically cliche it all seemed. I had to wonder if this was all just a really fucked dream.</p>
<p>We marched up to the front of the desk and waited while the pudgy man and lanky guy continued to talk. The subject of the conversation, being the accounting business of their enterprise piqued my interest as my eyes drifted down to the book on the desk. It was upside down of course, but I had a little trick to get over that. I closed my eyes, but in my mind's eye I was able to take the image already stored in my memory and rotate it till I could properly make out the text and numbers. It was a ledger of weekly expenses over the course of a month. It detailed the various forms of income they had, the various expenses they had, and the total net gain over the month. </p>
<p>This ledger provided me with 3 important facts, they used arabic numeral system we used on Earth, their writing system was a near exact copy of Japanese, and they were definitely criminals considering smuggling, trafficking, and protection money were all forms of income listed on the ledger. As I examined it something began to niggle at the back of my head, some kind of inconsistency or something, but before I could find it a slap to the back of my head broke my reverie.</p>
<p>“You awake stupid?” My bloodthirsty captor asked. My eyes shot open to see the guy in the chair staring at me, a crooked grin on his face.</p>
<p>“So what have you brought me today Ryota?” The apparent Boss asked.</p>
<p>“We found this boy sleeping in the woods south of the compound, he wasn’t armed and was dressed in these clothes. We took him captive and brought him back here for you to decide what will be done with him,” Ryota answered.</p>
<p>“He’s tall and muscled, but he’s as dumb as an ox. He jabbers like a drunk loon. I’d bet he’d make a great mule or rock carrier, seems that’s all he’d be good for” My bloodthirsty captive added with a laugh and another slap to the back of my head.</p>
<p>“Interesting idea Kazou, so boy why were you in my forest?” The Boss asked me, knitting his pudgy fingers together and resting his head on them. I cleared my throat and tried to sell a lie the only way I knew how, by telling the truth.</p>
<p>“Well,” I began, but I heard a snort from Kazou and the grin on the Bosses face grew a bit in amusement. I forged on anyway. “I’m just lost sir, I didn’t mean to trespass on your forest. I just lost my way from my family and I was looking for my parents,” I explained cringing at how my vocal cords seemed to trip over the noises my brain told them to make. Unhelpfully, the niggling feeling of inconsistency was still stuck in the back of my head as I tried to spin a web of bullshit that would let me not get sold off as a human mule.</p>
<p>“Interesting story, do you know where your parents are? Would they be able to afford the fee for your safe return? The woods these days are awfully dangerous and I hope they could afford for me to send some of my valuable men to escort you back to them, safe and sound of course,” The Boss said with a smile of a viper who had a mouse dead to rights. Looking into his eyes I knew there would be no fucking way I could claim to have parents here, he seemed like the guy would cut my throat just for lying to face. My planned lie died in my mouth as I muttered out the truth.</p>
<p>“No sir sorry sir. I don’t know where they are,” I admitted. His grin just grew wider.</p>
<p>“Well then I guess we'll just have to find accommodations for you here, though you’ll need to work a bit to pay for your room and food. I’m sure that would be perfectly fair, considering the protection I’m giving you. Ryota can you take him to the-”, the Boss was cut off by a loud set of knocks at his door.</p>
<p>“What!?” he growled at the door. A different guy burst through the door and came in looking both scared and overwhelmed.</p>
<p>“Boss! We just ran out of oil for the lanterns? Should we still send out Koji’s raiding party?” The  minion asked.</p>
<p>“How did we already run out, do you morons bath in the stuff? And no don’t send out Koji’s how the fuck is he supposed to raid if he can’t see enough to trip over his own dick?! Send someone out to get more lantern oil and rush back before, if they are late tell them they will have to answer to me personally!” The Boss yelled, the illusion of a calm mobster totally broken. Though, this interruption gave me time. Time to realize how fucked I was, and how there was no way out of the situation, and how it was strange that 30,000 of whatever currency they used was always missing every week in that damned ledger. The last thought brought the wave of panic building inside me to screaming halt, as the little niggling sensation at the back of my head disappeared.</p>
<p>“That’s it! There’s always 30,000 skimmed off, but the method and amount skimmed always changes week to week” I mused to myself. I had been lost in my own head so I didn’t notice how the minion was already starting to run out of the room, and I had mused loudly enough for the lanky guy to hear me.</p>
<p>“What did you say?” He questioned me. </p>
<p>“Oh, err. Well there's always 30,000 or so always unaccounted for week by week. See, in week two revenues and expenses both rise, but revenues rise 15% while expenses rise 22%. Every other week the rise and fall is a 1 to 1 ratio, such as in week 3 and week 1, but in those weeks transport, animal feed and maintenance costs rise 7% higher than they do in either weeks 2 or 4 compared to the revenues and other expenses. It's never just one item, but all told each week one item is always a bit more expensive or a bit less profitable than it should be otherwise.” By the end of my ramble I had all the eyes of the room glued to me. The once mocking grin of the Boss turned into a contemplative frown. </p>
<p>“There's no way that's right let me see,” The lanky guy focused intently on the ledger and began to scan it with his eyes more carefully. The Boss’s eyes also narrowed as they shifted from me to the ledger. The eye patch guy just stared at me, but with an intensity that could set wood alight.</p>
<p>“I’ll be damned, you’re right, how did you know this?” The lanky guy pointed an accusing finger at me. I shrugged.</p>
<p>“Something seemed off to me at a glance, I just sorta figured it out ya know?” I offered up. All of a sudden I saw a possible window opening for me, but I had to be careful.</p>
<p>The Boss looked up from the book and stared at me with a new look in his eyes, interest. </p>
<p>“So you picked this up with just a quick glance at my ledger eh? Even though your speaking skills leave something to be desired I surely can’t let a talent with numbers like that go to waste, and since you’ve lost your parents and would be penniless and defenseless out in the woods, why don’t you come work for me as my personal accountant. I’ll give you a clean bed to sleep on, warm food to fill your belly, and a small stipend for you to buy personal effects. At least until you can locate your parents. Sound fair?” He offered with a sly grin. Reading between the lines, I was not going to be sold off as a human mule if I was able to provide value as a personal accountant. I doubted he’d just let me leave freely anyway, so this would be the best outcome I could get.</p>
<p>“That sounds like a very fair and generous option, I gratefully accept. I must say I do not know your name sir?” I asked back using the most deferential way I knew how.</p>
<p>“Excellent!” He clapped his hands together. “I am Arata Kawaguchi, but you can just call me Boss. What is your name, my newest friend?” He said with a smile. It was honestly jarring how quickly he switched from willing to sell me like I was a prized pig to being a stereotypical pal.</p>
<p>“My name is Roger Walker.” I offered up. The Bosses face turned puzzled for a bit. </p>
<p>“That's a unique name, my new friend. Anyway, Mr. Tsunoda can you please find and show our new associate a quality room, a warm meal, and clothes and personal effects he will need to be an effective help to me?” The Boss asked, looking towards the lanky guy. </p>
<p>“Yes Boss,” he responded.</p>
<p>“Good, now Ryota can you please untie him. I’ll make sure you gentlemen are compensated well for finding me such a talented lad,” the Boss ordered. Soon thereafter the ropes binding my hands were untied and for the first time it seemed like my luck was starting to turn up after it had been in the straight toilet for so long.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Boss,” Ryota said with a slight bow after having untied me.</p>
<p>“Think nothing of it, I make sure to reward those who go above and beyond in their service to me. Mr. Walker I will send for you tomorrow morning so you can begin your work for me, so get a full night's rest and be ready to work tomorrow to earn you keep. Now go get settled,” the Boss advised congenially.</p>
<p>“Thank you Boss,” I replicated Ryota’s tiny bow. This only seemed to amuse the Boss. He motioned forward to Tsunoda, who came forward and ushered me out of the room. As we were leaving the room I glanced back to see Mr. Eye Patch whispering in the Bosses ear while staring at me. It sent an involuntary shiver down my spine.</p>
<p>Over the course of the next three hours I learned many things. First of Tsunoda was a nice enough guy, who had also been conscripted to serve as the personal assistant to the Boss. Second off I learned the location and purpose of every building in the fort. Especially important were the stables, dining hall, trading post, storehouses, laundromat, barracks, and dormitory, which is where I would be staying. Though, dormitory wasn’t what they called it, it was the same functionally. Small private single rooms that would have a shared bathroom, common area, and other facilities. Honestly, it was a bit of an incongruity to have clearly medieval technology in some areas and also have mostly modern dormitory complexes with indoor plumbing and hot water.</p>
<p>In terms of equipment and clothes, I was issued 7 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, 3 pairs of shorts, 10 pairs of underwear, 10 pairs of socks, 1 pair of shoes, 1 pair of winter boots, 1 pair of sandals, 1 winter coat, 1 backpack, 1 raincoat, and 1 medium jacket. In terms of items, I was given a toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, pens, pencils, a notebook, soap, a lighter, and a set of towels. This set of items led to the incongruities pilling up even higher, it made no sense that synthetic fiber toothbrushes could exist in the same universe as people wielding spears, yet that was seemingly the universe I was in the moment so I just shut up and rolled with it. </p>
<p>Tsunoda took me inside the dining hall, made sure my name was on the list of people who were to be fed extra well, and grabbed dinner for both of us. We chatted about mostly pointless things, like how this or that thing was odd. He was a 26 year old dude, who was a bit shocked that a 14 year old kid had been wandering a forest in weird clothing. I mostly deflected the questions by either eating or just shrugging. Eventually, we finished eating. He led me to my room, handed me a room key and wished a good night. </p>
<p>My room was a tiny space, room just enough for a bed, bedside desk, and a small dresser. My room had a glass window that overlooked the inside of the fort from the 4th floor of the dormitory. A candle inside of a glass lantern burned cheerfully on the desk. It was weird how I somehow had gotten a room no worse than a college dorm in this criminal hive, though I guess it made sense to have decent quarters so that the minions didn’t grumble too much about the Boss. </p>
<p>I stowed all my clothes in the dresser and stripped down into my underwear. Tomorrow, I would get my pajama’s cleaned by the laundromat so I could wear them in bed, but for now they were filthy due to me trekking and sleeping in the forest in them exclusively. I blew out the candle in my room and crawled under the covers. The light from the fort slightly luminated my room, but I didn’t need it. Once I memorized what my room looked like, I never needed light anyways.</p>
<p>I stared into the ceiling. I had somehow survived being captured by criminals, and was not being sold off as a slave. Though, I was going to have to work and help them. In terms of purely static morality, I was doing a bad thing, but also what choice did I have? Though, I guess that's how everybody rationalizes this sort of thing, I would just have to make sure I didn’t cross the line. It would be nice if I could somehow make it through this situation without doing anything truly evil before I somehow escape from here. </p>
<p>Eventually, my mind quieted as best it could and I was lulled to sleep by the flickering of firelight streaming into my window.</p>
<p>----<br/>
<b>October 17th? Morning, Unknown year<br/></b>


<b>Kawaguchi’s Fort</b><br/>
<b>Roger’s Room</b></p>
<p>The sounding of knocking broke me from my dreamless sleep.</p>
<p>“Hey Roger? You need to get up, we need to get to work within 30 minutes. I came by to make sure you got up in time to get breakfast. Can you hear me?” The voice of Tsunoda emanated through the door.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m up, give me a minute to get dressed.” I said, pulling the covers aside and standing out of bed. I quickly pulled out and donned a shirt, shorts, and a pair of sandals. I opened the door, Tsunoda was standing outside.</p>
<p>“Make sure to get your writing materials, you can write right?” Tsunoda looked at me questioningly.</p>
<p>“Oh right, and yes I can write,” I turned back into my room shoveling my writing materials into my pack and turning back to Tsunoda.</p>
<p>“Alright, ready to go!” I said more cheerily than I felt.</p>
<p>“Sounds good to me kid,” Tsunoda said with a chuckle. We swung by the dining hall where the cooks armed us with a pair of rice balls each. We walked and ate while we crossed the compound. Entering the central building we shuffled up to the top floor where the guards waved us into the Bosses room. Inside was the Boss and Mr. Eyepatch who was leaning on the same wall as he had been yesterday.</p>
<p>“Good to see this fine morning Mr. Walker, now the task I have for you might be work intensive or it might not. It all depends on you, does that work for you?” He prompted with a raised eyebrow. </p>
<p>“I’ll make sure the job gets done whether it’s easy or hard, Boss,” I responded diplomatically.</p>
<p>“Good answer, now I want you to go through all the ledgers from all my locations and figure out where money has been disappearing. It could be happening a lot or it could only have happened once, I don’t know which I why I’m going to have you search thoroughly through all the records available to see if you can find anything. That ledger you saw yesterday was just for one of my many outposts, and a smaller one at that. You’re gonna have a lot of documents to sort through, but I wouldn’t have hired you if I didn’t think you could perform up to my expectations.” The Boss explained.</p>
<p>“I’ll do my best and meet expectations, Boss,” I responded. It was actually easy to talk to him if you imagined him as a no nonsense coach mixed with the fact he could order your murdered.</p>
<p>“Excellent, Tsunoda, can you find him a work space and provide him with the full records from the first location.”</p>
<p>“Yes, Boss.” Tsunoda replied.</p>
<p>“Good, Mr. Walker I want you to return here when you're finished combing through those first ledgers. Please have a written report and examples so that I may narrow down who could be the culprit.” </p>
<p>Tsunoda guided me out of the office into a different office space that was 2 floors down from the Bosses office. Inside were a desk, chair, lantern, and a window. Honestly, it was a small closet space, but it was quiet and would be mostly private. Tsunoda fetched the ledgers for me while I got settled. </p>
<p>Tsunoda returned with 5 thick ledgers in hand which he dropped onto my desk. </p>
<p>“You're joking right?” I probed.</p>
<p>“Nope! This is all the records for that particular location dating back 5 years. I have to get going now so Good luck!’ He said with a cheerful smile departing the room and closing the door.</p>
<p>“Well, at least it's not an unpaid internship,” I muttered to myself. I opened up the first ledger and began to skim it. I began by flipping through all the ledgers so all the information inside would already be stored. I then proceeded to work backwards from the first instance of skimming that I had noticed which was the report of this particular location from three months ago, I confirmed that the skimming had continued in the three months since that first ledger page I had seen.</p>
<p>The amount skimmed was remarkably consistent up until 13 months from the latest financial report. After that it quickly shrank to almost nothing, but I kept going through each page to try and see if there had been an inciting event. I found it 18 months from the latest report, a measly 5,000 or so of whatever currency they used here. After that there was straight up nothing by minor over and undercounts. </p>
<p>So it seemed rather obvious that this first 5,000 was a test, then the culprit waited to see if anything happened. When a couple of months passed and nothing happened, they began to increase the amount to 30,000, which seemed to be the amount that skimmer thought was the most they could get without raising suspicions. I pulled out a pen and began to detail all my findings, my handwriting skills were not up to par with the new language they were faced with so it took a good amount of time and patience to write everything down. I made citations to specific examples and page numbers in the ledgers.</p>
<p>During this work I figured out 2 interesting elements, 1 their calendar system was exactly the same as the one on earth. It had 12 months, 30ish days per month, and 365 days in total. What this implied, I had no fucking idea. The second was more interesting, but also of unknown importance. The day of month in this world lined up exactly with the day it would be in my original world except it was 3 months earlier so here it was June instead of October. What this indicated I also had no idea, but it was interesting nonetheless. </p>
<p>It was late in the afternoon when I was able to finish my report. My hands ached, I was hungry, and I needed a breather, but I wanted to get my report turned into the Boss as soon as possible so he wouldn’t think of me as lazy or stupid. I picked up the stack of ledgers and the 4 pieces of paper that formed the basis of my report. The guards outside his room opened the door for me and I walked. </p>
<p>Boss, Tsunoda, and Mr. Eyepatch were all in the room looking over some other paperwork. I announced that I was done and launched into my report. I placed my 4 sheets of paper on his desk, pointed from them to points in the ledger, and generally detailed the entirety of my findings as I saw it. Tsunoda and Boss would interrupt me from time to time, so to ask questions or point out something to others. It was a 20 minute minute spiel that had me feeling confident of my success.</p>
<p>“So in conclusion I can guess the first instance of skimming occurred 9 months ago. After which it became consistent over a period of 2 months after that first instance and then has continued ever since. I’ve included sums of the total estimated amount of money that had been skimmed off. I can answer any more questions you have Boss.” I concluded my small presentation to the Boss. His smile widened. </p>
<p>“No, that’s quite enough actually. I already have an almost certain guess as to who is responsible, excellent work Mr. Walker. As a reward for your exemplary work I will allow you to be apprenticed to my Shinobi commander, you may call him Commander Uchiyama or whatever he may desire from a student of his. He will meet you later tonight after his duty shift to me ends. Please be in front of this building two hours after sundown, Mr. Walker,” Boss ordered.</p>
<p>“Yes, Boss. I’ll take my leave,” I turned and left the room, my head spinning. Shinobi? Did he mean ninja, like with the throwing stars? On the one hand the clearly Japanese theme would have indicated something like this being possible, but criminals having ninja with them? That was fucking odd, but in the end it was important to remeber all my preconceptions would have to be overwritten if I were to survive.</p>
<p>Tsunoda joined me for dinner that night in the dining hall. I was happy to have his company. He talked about the unknown skimmer I had unmasked. He was apparently a new appointment that had been recommended by one of the Bosses family members, so it would be messy trying to remove him. When I asked what would happen to him, Tsunoda looked worried and then changed the subject. I did my best to write it off as nothing, but in the back of my head I already knew what I had set in motion. Unfortunately, forgetting it would be not a luxury I could attain.</p>
<p>I asked Tsunoda if there was any real violence or any people I had to look out for here. Something that I had always seen in movies is that there were always nutjobs who would be slighted by me somehow and try to shank me in the shower. He waved off my concerns, Boss ran a tight ship and any participation or hiding of inter-crew violence was harshly punished, so it wasn’t a concern. It was apparently one of the unique things that made the Boss a successful crime lord, he could hire people who normally wouldn't have the temperaments to work with criminals compared to other criminal bosses who let violence run rampant inside their organizations. It made sense, Tsunoda wasn't the most intimidating guy and yet he was a key piece of the Bosses inner circle. In any movie crime group he probably would’ve been the first guy shanked. </p>
<p>Our dinner continued in much the same manner as we talked away the time, our plates already cleaned empty. Eventually, he made his excuses and he left. Looking outside I noticed how dark it had already become, searching my memory I realized we had been talking for what already was probably two hours after sundown. I bolted up and ran back to the central admin building. Mr. Eyepatch did not seem like the kind of guy who's bad side I would not want to meet.</p>
<p>He was leaning back against the building as I approached the main entrance.</p>
<p>“You're barely on-time, do not make this tardiness a consistent habit,” He lectured in tone betraying nothing.</p>
<p>“Yes, Comm-,” I began to apologize.</p>
<p>“Do not call me that in this setting. You have not earned the right to call me anything at all yet. Until you have earned that right you will not speak unless spoken to and prompted to respond,” He icily ordered. I opened my mouth to acknowledge his order and then shut it.</p>
<p>“You will follow me,” He commanded before leaning up and beginning to walk at a brisk pace. It took me a moment to internalize what he said before my brain caught up and I rushed to catch up to him.</p>
<p>We walked at a brisk pace, we exited the fort through its gate and continued on a dirt path that led into the dark forest. The moon was covered by low clouds so it was horrifically dark, so dark that I could barely make out Mr. Eyepatch who was only 5 feet ahead of me. Normally, I would have been tripping on every little branch and divot in the road, but I had been taken this way when I had been first captured so my mental map of the road allowed me to deftly ignore the numerous roots and divots that would have had me eating dirt had this been my first time.</p>
<p>We continued on the path for about 20 minutes or so, eventually the path split and Mr. Eyepatch took me down the split I had not walked before. I began to trip and stumble more. Ten more minutes of me bumbling through the forest, the path broke into a small clearing. He wheeled towards me and I stumbled to a stop.</p>
<p>“What do you know of Chakra?” He asked, his singular blue eye seeming to glow in the dark of the night. That question stumped me, he couldn’t be serious right? Though, the hard edge in his eye made it clear that lying to him would be as effective as lying to Boss.</p>
<p>“It’s some kind of pseudoscience bullshit that is peddled to fools who want to feel in more control of their negative emotions. It has some kind of “energy” element that comes from the body and the universe at large. It's not real,” I concluded. The look in Mr. Eyepatches' singular blue eye did indicate that I was saying something wrong as I talked, but I finished strong and completed my explanation.</p>
<p>“You are incorrect, Chakra is very much real. Explain to me how you have not encountered it before, you are clearly not from the Five Nations,” Mr. Eyepatch’s glare pierce into me.</p>
<p>“You are corrected I am not from the Five Nations, and where I come from we do not have Chakra,” I answered curtly.</p>
<p>“Where are you from? Tell me how you got here, leave nothing out.” He commanded. </p>
<p>I only hesitated for a moment, then I launched into as in depth an explanation as I could muster. I explained about my Earth, I explained about how we had wondrous machines that could fly and communicate instantly. I told an abbreviated life story, and I went into detail about my perfect memory. The story of how I woke up in bed and was drawn to a floating orb in the sky that seemingly transported me here was as detailed as I could be. Mr. Eyepatch would interrupt me periodically to ask clarifying questions. It took me an hour to get through with my explanation.</p>
<p>Once I was finished, Mr. Eyepatch simply nodded. “I see, that would explain why I can sense no chakra within your body. Though, if your description of your life is as you say it is, you might have potential as an apprentice after all. Stand still,” He commanded. Time seemed to slow as suddenly my brain kicked into overdrive. It is said that certain moments seem to last forever, because our minds actually record at the highest detail possible so our experience of time slows due to the flood of information. My mind was always recording every single minute detail perfectly, and yet time slowed for me.</p>
<p>Mr. Eyepatch’s right hand began to emanate a soft blue glow, a seeming outline of energy began to pulse around his digits. A tingle ran up my back, my hair stood on end, and my eyes widened. I was seeing the impossible, the clearly utterly fucking impossible. The glowing hand shot out towards me. Before I could even flinch, the hand grasped the left side of my chest.</p>
<p>Sensation exploded inside of me. It started around the area his fingers directly grasped, but it quickly spread into a formless blob in my chest and heart. It was an odd sensation, part vibration, part temperature, part emotion, part knowledge, part form, and many more aspects that were unplaceable within my own experience. What was definite, was that it was foreign and not of me.</p>
<p>I gasped. My muscles tightened, my body twitched, but the iron grasp of the hand upon my heart left me no leverage to break free. My eyes darted between the singular blue eye and the hand on my chest.</p>
<p>The moment lasted ten heartbeats, just as I saw an evaluation of some kind race through the singular blue eye staring at me, something changed within me.</p>
<p>In an infinitesimally small piece of me, one inch deep and in between my 3rd and 4th ribs, a singular portion of me turned the aspects of the foreign energy that was bathing it into something different, something that was my own. This new piece of me began to convert and pump out this energy with new aspects. It was like the entirety of my person was being demonstrated by this new form of energy. It’s hard to explain, but it was simultaneously a frequency, a shape, and a feeling of something that was attuned to the universe at some deeper level.</p>
<p>The sensation of this new energy began to spread, first as an ill-defined blob, but then as a racing tree of sensation. It was as if my blood carried this new sensation to every corner of my body. As this sensation traveled into my head it merged with the constant thing I guess I would call a consciousness, or self. This sensation was a manifestation of me, my body, my mind, my will, and all the other things that were me. I felt my will begin to take hold of sensation and with a flip of a switch I was in control of it. I felt the inertia and motion of the energy as it reached out to encompass the rest of my bed, and I felt supremely confident that I could halt it and stop it if I willed it. It continued to grow.</p>
<p>This entire mental revolution took only 3 heartbeats of time. by the end of it I was staring back into the single of Mr. Eyepatch, a new understanding starting to dawn on me. His eye had widened as my body had developed this new sense. A small smile creased his face.</p>
<p>“It seems you do have talent, I will train you. You have earned the right to call me Sensei. Will you accept my training?” He asked, his eye boring into my very soul.</p>
<p>“Yes, I accept. Thank you, Sensei”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Following Author's Note: That's a wrap for chapter 1. I hope I was able to at least interest you in the person of Roger. I hope however to make it clear that he isn’t going to just be a Gary Stu, though I have stacked the deck extremely in favour for him. I mean combining the memory aspect ripped straight from Peter Cline's “The Fold”, with the physical abilities of a Calvin Johnson, Bo Jackson or Jim Thorpe creates a very powerful person. However, this does not mean he is impossible to make errors, foolishness, over-reaction, and other general flaws that make the human experience so unique. I do hope though over time we can see that he is a 14 year old who is prone to the errors that all of us who were or are at that age committed. Finally, I hope that as the story progresses he will gain more of a personality as he goes through his adventure partially as a defined arc of growth and partially as a natural outgrowing of a personality that I can just guess at from the start of this adventure. Thank you for reading this far, and all forms of feedback are extremely welcome.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 2: Underbelly of Cruelty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Preceding Authors Note: Note this chapter will contain an element of human trafficking and what it is used for. If this something you cannot stand to read, I suggest you do not finish this chapter. Other chapters will not contain this, but I understand that bad experiences can be relieved with the wrong triggering event.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>-----<br/>
<b>June 27th Nighttime, Unknown year</b><br/>
<b>Outside of Boss Kawaguchi’s Fort</b><br/>
<b>Forest Clearing</b></p>
<p>“Fuck!” I cursed as a fist impacted my stomach and I collapsed to the ground.</p>
<p>“Your reactions are too slow, you think too much. Your memory may be good, but you don’t have time to search through it when in combat,” lectured my attacker. My designation of Mr. Eyepatch had given way to the more widely used nickname of Old Salt, how a nautical term came to be used for a trained killer I have no idea. It did fit him better considering he was both old at least relative to everyone else who worked at the Fort, and he was angry and mean like salt in a wound so that also fit.</p>
<p>I struggled back to my feet and retook the ready stance. My training with Old Salt had been extremely productive, or at least that's what he claimed. From my perspective it seemed like I just had an appointment to get the shit kicked out of me for three hours every night. Though, I would admit I was making it hard for him to to separate me from my fecal matter so there was progress. </p>
<p>Early on he had figured out that the modern conditioning, muscle building, and nutritional knowledge I already held was equal or superior to his own methods so he let me do my own thing when it came to physical training. All I had to do was continue building muscle and improve my stamina. To this end I had been able to procure a set of dumbbells, a primitive leg press, and get larger meal portions from the dining hall, all with the expressed enthusiasm of Boss. The general trend of my days went something like, wake up, eat large breakfast, run laps around the fort, shower, work for the Boss, eat lunch and do short periods of weights during the middle of the day, finish the work for the Boss, eat dinner Tsunoda, do extended workout, have a late snack, work with Old Salt, and bed. It was an exhausting routine, but it wasn’t much different than my highschool football routine though with some minor differences.</p>
<p>When it came to arts of combat and chakra manipulation I was on less firmer ground. Learning stances, hand seals, and other feats of pure memorization were easy. Putting them into practice was less easy. I did tend to get stuck within my own head trying to search my memory for information such as what to do when punched high, when kicked, and ect. It was a routine I had become well used to, turning what I had stored in my memory into deeper reaction and total understanding. That was why I continued to get thrown to the floor by Old Salt.</p>
<p>One thing that was interesting was the hand seals. These were 12 positions in which I could place my hands to make my chakra do something, on the surface not that interesting. However, hidden underneath those 12 simple gestures was the fact that they provided for nearly infinite combinations. A jutsu that had four hand signals could be any one of 20,736 possibilities! Each of which would have a totally unique effect, because each hand seal was like a fold of a piece of paper in Origami. So each hand seal would fold and shape chakra in the body in certain ways due to how Chakra flowed through the hands extensively, so changes in hand shape would cause corresponding changes further down the flow of chakra in the main body.</p>
<p>As I understood it, this worked because Chakra was transported around the body by a “Chakra Pathway System”, which as far as I could gather was a literal physical structure within the body that followed a similar developmental pattern as the circulatory or lymphatic system. This begged the question of how I was able to generate and use chakra since there was no way I had developed this physical structure at birth or in the short time I had been in this world, when I asked Old Salt about this he simply shrugged and said “Life finds a way, don’t question it if works” </p>
<p>This was an acceptable, but unsatisfying answer. So I punted the question deep into my memory for consideration at a later time. I had been doing that a lot lately, pushing important questions away for later consideration. My middle school hockey coach used to say that ‘If you leave your work for tomorrow, your work from tomorrow will take two tomorrows to finish,’ so while a bit rough around the edges the general intention made sense to me. But, he also never had to work for a crime lord while learning how to wield magic wizard powers so maybe it didn’t apply in this case.</p>
<p>Though my own progress in actually performing those magic wizard powers was less confused than my theoretical understanding of them. So far I have been able to do all the hand seals and feel the different flows and “shapes” of chakra within my own body. I was still far off from ever making it do anything, but it was exhilarating to feel the fluctuations of this new 6th sense within my own body. It was definite proof that something was going on, what that was? I hadn’t the foggiest. </p>
<p>“There is one last item we shall do tonight, a test,” Old Salt proffereding me a chance to open my big fat mouth and earn a set of push ups. I managed to not take the bait and waited for him to continue. He did after the bait wasn’t taken, though his mouth did twitch a smidgen downwards when it was clear I wasn’t fooled.</p>
<p>“It will be a simple test. You need to just touch me, if you do that you win and I’ll teach you a skill that will make you one of the most valuable chakra wielders in the region. You can choose to decline this test as well if you don’t think you're capable of it and there will be no punishment. However, if you cannot complete that task within 20 minutes, you will have to sleep out in the forest for the night,” Old Salt stated, his face betraying no emotion.</p>
<p>High reward? Deceptively simple goal? Easy out? This was 100 percent going to be a test that he expected me to fail, so I was left with only a single course of action.</p>
<p>“When do we start?” I said puffing up my chest.</p>
<p>“Now,” He stated simply before disappearing into a puff of smoke. In his place a ticking clock sat on the ground.</p>
<p>“Son of a gun!” My head around, but in the dark forest it was impossible to see anything distinguishable. Where had he gone? I searched my memories for any clues, a slight blur moving to the left of me gave me the only clue I needed. I took off in that direction. Other evidence of him moving this way came in the form of broken twigs, stomped leaves, and other signs of disturbance.</p>
<p>And I chased him, and chased him, and chased him some more. There were always little noises and glimpses of something up ahead to keep me going. It was when I passed a tree with the exact same bark pattern that my bullshit detector finally woke up from its nap and started screaming bloody murder.</p>
<p>I skidded to a stop. Theres was absolutely no fucking way that two trees would share the same swirly bark pattern on my left next to a moss covered rock in the straight line that I was running. In nature, patterns like that did not repeat, ever. I remebered every single fucking tree and rock from my gramps cabin up in Northern Minnesota, and all of them were slightly different in bark patterns, branch layout, and other minor details.</p>
<p>It was then that I noticed that the forest that wasn’t on my straight line of pursuit was kind of indistinct, darker somehow which was odd because the light level in the forest should have been roughly the same everywhere. This set off a new question in my head, how was it that I was able to see well enough in the dark to notice snapped twigs and crushed leaves. Before I could only barely ever see in moonlight, and here the tree covered the moonlight. Something was up and I needed a sanity check</p>
<p>I set off towards the indistinct darkness that was perpendicular to my line of advance and something odd happened, as I began to travel in my new direction the light level increased dramatically and new details seemed to pop in existence. I stopped and closed my eyes. I slowly worked through the playback in my mind and yes, they literally did pop into existence and yes there was an unexplainable brightening that had occurred as I moved perpendicularly.</p>
<p> So where did that leave me? I foresaw two distinct options, 1. Old Salt had somehow dumped into a funny space of some kind, or 2. He was fucking with my mind. </p>
<p>I sat down to have a think. Time was limited and I had burned some of it running through the funny house I now found myself in, but if I tried to solve both of the two distinct options that would explain my imprisonment I most certainly would run out of time. So I had to pick one of the two possible avenues on which would break out of this predicament. For this I relied upon the one rule that had never led me astray. KISS, ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ so which of my two options would have been simpler for Old Salt to place upon me pocket dimension or hallucinations? </p>
<p>Hallucinations obviously were, so how was he doing that to begin with? Drugs? Or some usage of his wizardly chakra powers? Drugs would be easy, but they probably wouldn't be this specific in their affect, plus when would he have had the chance to inject him with something. Old Salt didn’t wear a gas mask so it wasn’t airborne otherwise he also would’ve been afflicted by it. This all led back to some usage of chakra, but how could chakra be used to change what I was perceiving or experiencing? It’d have to either attack my brain directly or attack the connections between my sense and my brain. I’d definitely be able to tell some kind of difference if there was some foreign chakra affecting my brain, the feeling would be completely different from the norm.</p>
<p>I focused inwardly and noticed how it felt at that moment, I then checked my memory on how it had felt 3 days ago. Yep, there was a distinct difference in my head. It was as if something was reshaping the chakra within my head. That pissed me off. </p>
<p>In retrospect, it was a bit dumb of me to throw as much chakra at the construct as I could, but I was annoyed and dumb. The construct in my head shattered as the pressure of all the chakra I could muster overwhelmed it. All of a sudden my sense shifted and in front of me was Old Salt, his single blue eye gazing at me with an almost bored expression. On impulse I reached out and tapped him with my right hand. He didn’t even raise his eyebrow. I grinned.</p>
<p>“I win,” I said.</p>
<p>“So you have. You’ve surprised me, I shall teach you the skill and I shall make you more than a simpleton who knows how to barely manipulate chakra. I will make you into a Shinobi, and I shall teach you the art of sealing,” he responded with his voice flat.</p>
<p>--------</p>
<p><b>August 27th Evening, 2016 RY</b><br/>
<b>Boss Kawaguchi’s Fort</b><br/>
<b>Roger’s Office</b></p>
<p>I stretched out my body as I put the finishing touches on a report that had been in the works for two weeks. It would be the crowning jewel of my work for Boss Kawaguchi, it was an analysis of inefficiencies in Boss Kawaguchi’s operation, if I was correct I could end up increasing profit margins by as much as 20% while cutting costs and raising overall morale. Once he read and implemented my recommendations, Boss Kawaguchi would become a very rich man. </p>
<p>On a side tangent, I had finally given in to the inevitable, I was going to return to Earth years as my benchmark for what was the current year. For the past two month’s I had been struggling to find some kind of universal year system that all of the Five Nations could agree on, so that I could start marking my memories accordingly. Alas, I was defeated by the fact nobody in this godforsaken world seems to give shit that everyone uses different year schemes. So I have reverted to using years as they would be back home, though I will continue to label the months as they are locally. Months matter because they dictate seasons and weather, years are just a number so I can use any number I well goddamned feel like, so 2016 it shall be until I find something better to mentally delineate my time here.<br/>
On the subject of what I’ve been doing the past 2 months, it can be summed up by one word, WORK!. My god it's endless, “Do this!”, “Find that!”, “Oh can you find out who's the traitor by Thursday, I want to cut out their tongue on Friday”, and so on. It’s ridiculous how much paper pushing a criminal organisation needed to keep the wheel spinning. They never showed this in the Godfather that's for sure.</p>
<p>In other news something disturbing has started to happen, I’ve begun to notice that memories are now starting to have emotions and commentary added on to them. Now you( or I) may be thinking, ‘Roger you utter fucking buffoon emotional interpretation always happens with memories, this isn’t odd you emotionally stunted nutjob’. To which I reply, first off why are you criticising me? You are me. Second off this is different than that, it’s more like I’m re-experiencing memories and there is a director's commentary added on, except I’m definitely not the director in this case. Which only leave’s my subconscious, and I’m not sure how I feel about my subconscious unionising to criticize Roger INC. Maybe this is just the inevitable conclusion of perfectly recalling memories on demand, or maybe the stress is getting to me and I’m just starting to lose it. Either way it would be something to watch.</p>
<p>In more grounded news I’ve become an “acceptable piece of Iwa cannon fodder” according to Old Salt. I guess a two month nightly crash course isn’t really the ideal way to learn how to duel to the death with other Shinobi. Either way, I’ve been learning many things, but I’ve also been accumulating an ever growing list of ‘Questions to be asked at a later time, TBD’ and it's driving me crazy.</p>
<p>For example, one time Old Salt used a jutsu to let him spew material out of his mouth to raise a stone wall 5ft tall by 10ft high by 1ft thick. When I asked him where he got the material to do this he said he moulded his chakra into the material to form the wall. Unfortunately this makes no fucking sense at all. Remember E = m X C^2? Einstein's famous equation, it basically says you can turn energy into mass or mass into energy, but it's barrier for doing so is the speed of light squared. That means it takes a shitton of energy to create mass or you get a shitton of energy when you convert mass to energy. So lets say that the wall Old Salt created was 100 pounds(an extremely conservative estimate), if you use E=m X C^2 to calculate how much energy would be needed to create that you get roughly 4 X 10^18th! That's roughly the amount of energy released by the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested by humanity! So if I’m correct that means every Shinobi is running around with thousands of nuclear weapons worth of energy stored within them. Maybe Chakra is just extremely energy dense, maybe it isn’t being converted into real mass, or maybe E doesn't equal m X C^2 here or C is just slower? I don’t know, but it freaks me out to see the laws of physics so easily be pissed on here. </p>
<p>Anyways, I’ve been learning how to control, convert, and utilize my own chakra to do all sorts of wild and fun things. For one part, I can now cloak myself in an illusion to appear as someone else, create an independent visual illusion of myself, and “switch” myself out at a moment's notice for an inanimate object. How all these tricks actually “worked” was still a bit of a head scratcher for me, but I knew the hand seals, what they felt like inside of me, and that they did something so further examination on how they worked would again be thrown on the ‘figure out later’ pile.  </p>
<p>In somewhat brighter news, I was having much more success learning the art of sealing. My rapid progress in this field seemed to be the biggest and only shock I had managed to deliver to Old Salt. Sealing was a massive pain in the ass, but it was incredibly interesting. For one part seals were at the same time both two dimensional constructs on a piece of paper and a three dimensional construct within themselves. What I mean is that the lines on the paper acted as the literal manifestation of the seal, but within the lines in the seal lay a 3 dimensional chakra construct that existed solely in the two dimensional space on the paper. In a nutshell, the lines in a seal were holograms that encoded the 3d aspect of the chakra machinery into a relatively simple 2d format that was easily transportable and robust. It was like a popup jutsu machine that would be flat and 2D when it didn’t have power, but when it gained power it would become 3D within the 2D space of the ink and would execute the jutsu that was built into it. So you could have two seals that would look exactly alike on paper, but would do completely different things depending on the holographic chakra machinery.</p>
<p>The problems with sealing was that it required extensive memorization of both 2D seal shapes and 3D chakra machinery within the seals. Every little factor in how the seal was drawn, what it looked like, what chakra machinery would be imbued within it, and many others all played a part in what, how, and if a seal would work. Fortunately, I was set in the memorization department so I was able to gobble up sealing information as fast as Old Salt could give it to me. I quickly outpaced Old Salt to the point where he just shrugged and told me not to kill myself. So I experimented with wild abandon, testing whatever I figured would be interesting.</p>
<p>Now this is not to say that I was already a seal master that I was a prodigy or genius, because I most definitely wasn’t if you considered how many times I had nearly blown off my fingers. What I did have was a super memory that turned me into a rapid experimentation machine. I was able to perfectly remember how my chakra would feel as it shaped itself when I imbued it into the seal. I was able to perfectly remember how different hand seals made chakra form into different constructs within my body and what those constructs felt like as they left my body. I was able to perfectly remember what the sealing, and jutsu books said. I was also able to use information from books on high level physics, fluid dynamics, circuitry, electromagnetism, and many other fields of modern earth science, whose books I had skimmed one night on a whim. </p>
<p>Not that I actually understood what they meant or what all the math in them was saying, but the diagrams were helpful and I sometimes understood a paragraph or two. All in all though, what these things allowed me to do was to constantly make predictions on what would happen if I changed an element of the seal and what the outcome would be. I was usually wrong, but every experiment helped me get closer to understanding what chakra was, what it did, and why it did things a certain way if acted upon in some way.</p>
<p>“State your business,” the command by the guard snapped me out of my self reflection.</p>
<p>“I’m here to present my report to the Boss,” I said confidently. My language skills had gone from barely understandable to fully fluent in the two months I had been here. Life was much easier with me not having to repeat myself over and over to be understood. The guard knocked on the door and announced me. An affirmative answer came through the door and I was let in.</p>
<p>Present in the office was the Boss and Old Salt.</p>
<p>“Good Evening Mr. Walker, It's a pleasure to see you. The jovial tone of the Boss combined with the large glass on his desk confirming my suspicions that he was in the process of one of his drinking fits.</p>
<p>“Good to see you Boss,” I responded with a cheerfulness I only half felt.</p>
<p>“Good, good. How are you doing without Tsunoda? I know he was a good friend of yours, but I just needed him to be on the watch at one of my less reliable bases.” That had been a hard thing to adjust to, Tsunoda had been the closest thing to an actual friend or even older brother that I had in this new world. It had been a lonely week, but I had just focused myself even deeper into my work, studies, and experimentation.</p>
<p>“It’s been a bit lonely, but I’ve been fine. I have the report on business optimizations right here,”<br/>
I jiggled the thick folder of paper in the crook of my arm. Boss waved for it and I set it down at his desk.</p>
<p>“I have found numerous areas where profitability can be increased. Overall, I expect that the profit margins of your enterprise could be raised by as much as 20% All those detailed changes can be found in the folder,” I summarized.</p>
<p>“Excellent! That's way better than I truly expected! You are an amazing asset, you know that,” He gestured at me with his hand holding his glass.</p>
<p>“Thank you Sir,” I accepted the praise.</p>
<p>“No I mean it, I don’t know what I would do without your help. You are a lifesaver. Hell you’ve probably read almost every single ledger and scrap of paper in this building,” Boss complimented.</p>
<p>“Maybe, maybe not. Honestly, it's hard to keep track of everything I’ve written,” I said contemplatively. That was a lie I did remember every single sheet of paper I had read, and I had read everything in this building.<br/>
“There's only one thing I can guarantee you haven’t read and you never will!” Boss chuckled at what seemed to be his own joke.</p>
<p>“Pardon? What have I missed sir?” I asked confusion flowing through my head as I tried to think if I had missed anything.</p>
<p>“You missed the most important of them all! The master ledger!” That statement confused me even more.</p>
<p>“I have read the master accounting ledger sir,” I stated hesitantly. It was not wise to contradict the Boss.</p>
<p>“I don’t mean that one. I mean this master ledger!” He drew open a drawer in his desk and lifted a book out of it. He was right. I had not read that one.</p>
<p>“This book holds the secrets of every man I’ve hired. It holds the locations of all my safehouses and secret treasure depots. It holds everything I need to know to keep on top of this pit of vipers!” He laughed at his own joke. I could see why he had not and would never let me read that book. If I did there would be nothing to prevent me from running off and collapsing his organization. </p>
<p>“I can see why you keep that one a closely guarded secret sir,” I mused.</p>
<p>“Yes yes it has all sorts of contacts that I can use for valuable business information. For one example did you know that the Leaf Village was attacked by the Sand and Sound villages recently? I knew. I knew a month in advance due to the numerous people who I hold leverage over, and I keep all of that in this single book! I made a huge profit off moving all my goods out of the Leaf right before the attack and then returning to sell them at inflated prices when they were rebuilding. Pure Genius!” He complimented himself. </p>
<p>“Very true sir,”</p>
<p>“Oh yes, in recognition of your excellent work for me I’ve had a gift delivered to your room. Make use of it however you like, just remember that I always make sure my supporters are richly rewarded. You are a valuable supporter and I hope what I reward you with is to your taste,” He chucked at the word taste, and I felt a tingle in my spine that screamed something bad was a foot. I hid my fear and simply nodded.</p>
<p>“I thank you in advance. You are always generous and kind Sir,” I said as I left the room. Behind me I heard more laughter and my stomach tightened. Something was definitely afoot.</p>
<p>I delayed my return to my room. I found every excuse imaginable to push back my arrival, something in me screamed ‘DANGER DANGER GET AWAY NOW’ I wanted to run, I very much wanted to run. But where would I go? How would I survive and start over with no food or money. It wasn’t an option. So once all my reasonable time wasters had been used I trudged to my building.</p>
<p>I stood in front of my door. A sense of dread gnawing at me. I unlocked the door, and after a 2 breaths I opened it. </p>
<p>My fear turned to confusion as my mind tried to process what it was seeing. There was a girl on my bed, under the covers, staring at me, eyes screaming some kind of emotion. My mind shut down. </p>
<p>“Welcome Master, I’m here at your behest to service your needs,” She cooed. Her voice was soft. It broke me from my mental car crash. The details in the room fell into place, the two robes hung over my chair, the collar around her throat, the seal on her exposed neck, the similar age she was to him, and the content of her words. It all fit into place in a single moment.</p>
<p>Bile rose in my throat as I tried to keep myself under control. I now understood what was so funny to Boss and I found I very much didn’t like his sense of humor. My voice was flat, as I spoke.</p>
<p>“I have no need of service, have a nice day,” I shut the door and walked away. The hand that held my keys shaking as I tried to not run away screaming or throw up at the intended use of my ‘reward’. Understanding dawned upon me as the emotion I had seen in that girl's eye came into focus; it was terror, absolute terror. I walked out of the building and bee-lined for the nearest gate.</p>
<p>I had to go somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t here. Bile again rose in my throat and threatened to spill out of me, but I forced it down. For once in my life I wish I didn’t have such a good memory, so I could forget the look in that girls eye. I did not forget.</p>
<p>I managed to keep the storm of emotions that was tearing apart my insides hidden until I had made it to the treeline outside of the fort. Clouds obscured the moon so the night was pitch black. As the tree’s behind me began to obscure whatever light the torches on the fort put out. It helped me imagine that I was hidden from everyone, most of all myself.</p>
<p>It started as suppressed sniffles, my own pride trying to hold back the flood of emotions that had been set off by the sight and realization of what that girl in my room meant. The sniffles turned into tears and full throat sobs as the reality of both her and my situation came into focus. She was an asset of the business that was used to generate profit, profit from her body and not of her own will. I was the guy who was helping that business run more efficiently and cheaper so they could use more people like they used her, for profit. I was helping in the system that enslaved and used that girl, I was literally part of the problem. I collapsed into the road and just full body sobbed.</p>
<p>A witch's brew of anger, sadness, self-loathing, loneliness, and helplessness consumed my being. I was lost in a strange world, full of bad men who did bad things and I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I was just a dumb 14 year old kid who had wanted to be a football player, and now I was helping in the trafficking of sex slaves only several years older than me, I was a victim and a monster. By trying to save my own skin I had fucked over unknown numbers of innocent people. If I hadn’t gotten myself this cushy accounting job I might be in the same place as she was, or worse.</p>
<p>I cried for a long time on the road, longer than I’d ever admit to anyone. It was just too much. I didn’t want to go back and be a part in hurting more people. I just wanted to go home. I was a coward, I just wanted to get away. I wanted to cleanse my memory of this accursed place and go out into the wilderness and get lost. I was just sick of pretending that being lost and probably never getting to see my parents or sister again was okay.</p>
<p>I could remember all the hugs my mom had ever given to me, but I still felt I needed someone to hold me and say, “It's going to be okay, it’s all going to work itself out.” That alone would have made me believe that everything would be alright. </p>
<p>“You’ve left yourself extremely exposed to attack, I could have plunged a kunai through your throat and you wouldn’t have had time to dodge.” A voice cut through the emotional fog that had dulled my attention. I spun around, coming face to face with Old Salt. How much had he seen? He must have known and heard how much of a sad coward he was. It was the end of him.</p>
<p>Looking into his lone eye though told a different story, not anger, enjoyment or even disgust, just resignation.</p>
<p>“I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” I snarled back. I scrambled to rise to meet his challenge with strength and determination that I wish I actually possessed. The look on Old Salt’s face didn’t change.</p>
<p>“It seems that Yamaguchi went through with his plan to ‘make you a man,’ '' Old Salt commented, betraying nothing about his opinion on the matter.</p>
<p>“Yeah? What of it?” I growled.</p>
<p>“He’s a fool and you made the decision that would allow to keep being my apprentice,” He stated simply.</p>
<p>“Yeah and fuck you t-, Wait what?” My angry retort died in my throat as I realized what he had actually said.</p>
<p>“Come walk with me,” He stated before turning and beginning to walk down the pathway further into the forest. I stood in stunned confusion before I ran to catch up. We walked in silence for several minutes afterwards. I stewed in my thoughts, trying to parse out what he actually meant. </p>
<p>“What did you mean by me keep being your apprentice?” I finally gave up and asked.</p>
<p>“If you had taken advantage of that girl, I would have never taught you a single thing again. I most likely would have broken your arm and then told Kawaguchi that you were unteachable.” His voice was firm and cold. He paused for a moment before continuing.</p>
<p>“You demonstrated that you hold at least an ounce of character and decency, rejecting such a vile gift isn’t a demonstration of you being a moral paragon, but it is enough that I could hope one day you could grow into a good person. So that you can make up for the sins you have already committed,” That last part drove a dagger into my stomach.</p>
<p>“You mean helping Bos- I mean Yamaguchi?” Old Salt nodded. The shame turned to anger in a flash.</p>
<p>“How can you say I’m this person barely worth saving, you’ve been helping him way longer and way more substantively that I never have. How are you such a paragon of morality as to judge me?” I was mad. I didn’t know why but him calling me a barely saveable person pissed me off. I saw him shake for a second and my anger dissolved as I realized what I had done. He still might break my arms, or hell my fucking neck after that comment.</p>
<p>“I’m nothing, but a full coward pretending to be a man.” This stole my breath away as I just stared at the back of the hardest, meanest, and coldest man I had ever known. He continued.</p>
<p>“I’ve done nothing but screw up and run from my fate in this life. I have nowhere to go, but I’m too much of a coward to just take my own life rather than continue helping inflict harm upon the world. I’m nothing but an empty shaped leach and have been for many years. There is no redemption or salvation for me. However, I can tell you already possess more strength and I do, you could be both a great shinobi and an even greater man. That’s why I have been training you, to see if you have the moral strength to be someone that isn’t just another power crazed monster. You proved to me today that you at least have the chance of becoming a force for good, so I will give you the chance to survive and do good. For your time in the service of Yamaguchi will come to an end at some day in the future, whether it be through your escape, someone killing him, or any other possibilities whatever they may be. However, I will ensure you have the skills to survive and have a chance at being the only good thing I will ever do in this godforsaken existence.” Old Salt spun and fixed me with his singular blue eye. It drilled into me with an intensity stronger than that of the sun. He continued.</p>
<p>“In return though, you must swear to me that you will be a force for good, that you will use your power to defend and lighten the burden of the weak, that you will not let your power corrupt you into weakness or evil, and that you will make up for the evil you’ve done already ten-fold. Swear it to me!” He commanded. I was stunned, I had to think about this didn’t I? You don’t swear oaths willy-nilly. Shame filled me at this thought, this was not an Oath I could even afford to think on. Who thinks about the pros and cons of an Oath to not be a bad person. I steeled myself.</p>
<p>“I swear it, I swear that I will be one who defends the weak and lightens their burden, I swear I will not let my power corrupt me to weakness or evil, I swear that I will make up for the evil I’ve done ten-fold!” I was yelling by the end. I was not going to let Yamaguchi get his fucking way, I was going to make that son of a bitch choke on the consequences of what he’s done. I was going to kill my cowardice, because anything else was not an option. I was committed.</p>
<p>Old Salt stared into me a little longer before he turned away and nodded. </p>
<p>“Good. Now prepare yourself, you have much more to learn,”</p>
<p>------</p>
<p><b>September 12th Evening, 2016 RY</b><br/>
<b>Outside of Boss Kawaguchi’s Fort</b><br/>
<b>Training Grove</b></p>
<p>Old Salt had stepped up my training after that day. Apparently he had convinced Kawaguchi that I needed a break from book work so that he could train me properly, Kawaguchi had agreed. So for the next two weeks Old Salt had turned me from the bumbling fool I had been into a bumbling fool that would trip over his own legs and stab himself with his own kunai. The gaps in my knowledge were plugged with deadly efficiency as Old Salt had taught the true fundamentals to being a shinobi. Weapon identification, breaking genjutsu, camouflage, tree climbing, water walking, tree jumping, trapping, and many other skills that were critical to survival as a shinobi. I learned about the Five Nations, and all the hidden villages. I learned how to bribe, steal, and cheat my way through life. He was working me to the bone.</p>
<p>It helped distract me from my dreams. Every night now whether it was that girl or someone I had known from earth, all of them would look at me with those same eyes. It could’ve been me or it could’ve been anyone. Either way, I was not forgetting what horrible things that girl had been through and was going to go through because of the man I worked for. Training was a very welcome distraction.</p>
<p>We were going through a lesson on genjutsu when a sound caught my attention. It was a loud boom. I twisted my head to locate the sound, it came from the fort. I turned back towards Old Salt whose own eye seemed to harden. Without a single word he took off back towards the fort, I scrambled after him. He ran faster than I had ever seen him go, it was a struggle to even track him with my eyes. He came to a dead stop at the edge of the treeline. It was a half minute before I caught up to him, but when I did I saw what held him in place.</p>
<p>Fire was rising up out of the fort as small black shapes darted around the fort. A ball of fire emerged from one of the black shapes and slammed into a guard tower that burst into flames. The fort was under attack.<br/>
------</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Post Chapter Author's Note: This chapter was a bit of struggle to write. For one part, second chapters are always difficult because it’s hard to take the initial plot thread and begin to weave into a more cohesive thread of a story. Also it was hard to write about the very real problem of human sex trafficing in a way that didn’t seem trite or simplistic, honestly I’m not sure I even succeeded in making it clear how much of an atrocious act it represents. I however can assure that I don’t intend to make dark evil things such as that a key point of the story, but it's important for the protagonist to understand that there are known and unknown consequences for actions one takes. Either way thank you for reading, feedback is always appreciated as it helps me write. Chapters 3 and 4 should be out in relatively quick time and will begin to lay bare the main story arc.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 3: Paving Hell's Road</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter took way longer to write than I intended it to, but I got it done so enjoy.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chapter 3: Paving Hell's Road</p>
<p>Disclaimer: Disclaimers don't actually mean or do anything, but tradition is tradition. I do not claim any ownership of Naruto.</p>
<p>
  <b></b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>September 12th Evening, 2016 RY</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Outside of Boss Kawaguchi's Fort</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Treeline</b>
</p>
<p><br/>
</p>
<p> ------------------------- </p>
<p>My eyes bulged as I realized the situation.</p>
<p>"Oh shit. Oh shit." I mumbled. I was transfixed by the chaos. A hand landed on my shoulder.</p>
<p>"It seems your time to leave has come early," the calm voice of Old Salt cut through my hypnosis. I fixed my eyes on him.</p>
<p>"Huh?" I muttered stupidly.</p>
<p>"It seems someone has taken an ire to Yamaguchi's activities and decided to stamp him out." He said, his head turning towards the fort. He stared at the fort for a moment before nodding to himself, apparently deciding to do something.</p>
<p>"It is unfortunate that I have run out of time to teach you, however I hope I can give you a gift that will make up for my failure. Wait here and keep low, if I do not return within half an hour I beg you to start running away from this place. You have a good head on your shoulders, I trust that you will be able to make it in the world should I fail in my last act as a teacher," He said, a certain coldness starting to enter his voice.</p>
<p>"What are you talking about? Where are you going to go?" I asked, but he had already disappeared from my side. I groaned and got on my stomach. I had no idea what Old Salt was up to, but I didn't like the implications of what he had said. He had just told me that I would probably end up in the wilderness with no help and no guidance, again. I was really starting to get tired of having my entire world be ripped away from me, this was the second time in four months.</p>
<p>Tears threatened to leak out of my eyes, but I held them back. It was really unfair how I had to not only lose my parents and home, but now lose the only person in this world that seemingly didn't see it as an asset to be used and thrown away. I did my best to banish the thoughts that haunted me, by keeping focused on the present. My breath was slow and quiet as the sounds of battle and screaming sometimes carried on the wind to my ears. The smell of fire and smoke caused my nose to tingle. My eyes picked up silhouettes cast by firelight of people fighting and running.</p>
<p>I knew the smart thing would have probably been to start running as soon as I had seen the fight, but a piece of me wanted to see if Old Salt would return. Our goodbye had been unsatisfying, and I wasn't ready to sever off another part of my life. So I sat and waited for the doubtful return of my teacher.</p>
<p>Nearly, on the dot of half an hour, the sound of rustling foliage snapped me to reality as I shot up my eyes locking onto the dark figure in the forest.</p>
<p>"Sensei?" I ventured.</p>
<p>"You should never reveal your position by asking for specific people, wait for unknown figures to identify themselves," the voice of Old Salt came out causing me to let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding. He came up and handed me a heavy backpack.</p>
<p>"That contains everything you'll need to survive, food, clothes, weapons, and other equipment. It also has my gift to you, Kawaguchi's master ledger. As you know that ledger has a great many valuable pieces of information in it, most importantly being the locations of Kawaguchi's money stashes. If you can get access to wealth inside you should be able to survive a long time," Old Salt stated. I hefted the backpack.</p>
<p>"Thank you Sensei, so now what do we do?" I asked.</p>
<p>"You will run, I will distract them," He stated plainly.</p>
<p>"Why? Can't we both run?"</p>
<p>"No, they will definitely catch and trap us if they can't find me. I had to fight my way out of the fort, so they know a ninja is in the area. If they can't find me nearby they will know I'm running and easily be able to find both you and me. There is no choice," He stated with finality. His logic was sound, but I hated it. I hated the whole situation. He must have been able to see my reluctance.</p>
<p>"Please, just follow my last order. I have a task that has to be done and you can only do that if you survive," he asked an almost pleading tone leaking into his usually stern tone.</p>
<p>"What task are you talking about?" Confusion evident in question. Old Salt sighed and pulled something out from his neck. It was a gold necklace; it had a gold chain with a weasel shaped pendant.</p>
<p>"I need you to take this necklace, go to the village hidden in the sand, find a man named Yousuke Konishi, give him the necklace, and tell him Kozuke still remembered to the end," I nodded. My eyes scrunched up as the last part of order made sense.</p>
<p>"To the end?" I choked up, trying to hold back the wetness I felt in my eyes. Old Salt simply nodded in response.</p>
<p>I had not been one to cry often before I had been shanghai'd from Earth, but now I was starting to make it a recurring event. It was weird, I wasn't close to Old Salt, he had just been my teacher. He had been the only consistently not awful thing in my life next to Tsunoda for the past 3 months. So fuck you for judging me for crying. A noise caused Old Salt to twist his head back towards the fort.</p>
<p>"It's time for you to go, take it and good luck on your travels. I wish I had more time as your teacher," Old Salt said handing me the necklace. I took it and tucked it into one of my pockets.</p>
<p>"You were a good teacher. I'll make sure the necklace gets where it needs to be," I muttered. How could words be so bad at conveying meaning to a man about to go to his death? Whatever I said wouldn't be enough for this guy who had decided to sacrifice it all just so my worthless ass could get away. Again, I was too weak to do anything but run away from problems. Old Salt smiled at me.</p>
<p>"Don't think those thoughts, I was where you are now. It is no good to burden yourself with those thoughts, just focus on the here and now. Now go, our time is almost up. It is time for this teacher to do what all teachers should do, pave the way for the future. Good luck," Old Salt turned away and jumped off back towards the fort. I stared as his form melted into the darkness.</p>
<p>I hesitated, and then started running.</p>
<p>I ran the whole night.</p>
<p>It was only when the sun came up that I stopped running. I was hungry as hell. So I stopped my endless running. I pulled out and ate a packet of trail food that Old Salt had packed for me. It was a bittersweet breakfast. My hunger now taken care of, I then pulled out the master ledger of Boss Kawaguchi's organization.</p>
<p>I flipped through the pages. It was important to first commit all the information to memory before I tried to actually dive into the meaning of the book. My head began to tingle as my mind started to sort through all the information my eyes had already stored to my memory. Thankfully, Kawaguchi was a prodigious labeler and I quickly found the section that was valuable to me.</p>
<p>'Treasure Cache Locations' The bold title at the top of the page was evidence alone that Kawaguchi had never intended for this ledger to fall into anyone's hands besides his own. I sifted through the page and rapidly came to two conclusions, Kawaguchi had made a ton of money when he was alive, and he was paranoid as hell. Dozens of Cache's with generation wealth dotted all the five nations with twice their number in mini-caches placed in areas in between the major caches.</p>
<p>Kawaguchi had stored a hell of a lot of money, and now I was the only person alive who could reasonably find it. If I could survive long enough to get the nearest one I would never have to worry about money ever again. The nearest cache was luckily on the axis that I had been running for the past couple hours. It was one of the smallest caches in terms of how much money it had, but it was still an astronomical amount to my needs.</p>
<p>This prompted me to really think about where I wanted to actually go besides getting the hell away from the fort. Besides getting the cash I didn't really have anywhere to go. I knew a lot of places that would be suitable at least in a logical sense, but when I tried to imagine myself going to some random town I only felt an undercurrent of fear and hesitancy. I would do my best not to end up in a new city all alone.</p>
<p>Fortunately my brain provided a simple answer. Tsunoda had been transferred to a town in the Land of Waterfalls. So if he was still alive, I could probably find him and whatever remnants of Kawaguchi's organization.</p>
<p>Considering my promise to Old Salt, it was a bit dicey morality wise to go immediately back to criminals, but I had no idea what to do. I could go find Tsunoda, get my feet under myself and then start being an extra good person to offset it.</p>
<p>My own justification was a load of bullshit, but it was something concrete that I could rest my hopes on besides 'BE GOOD'.</p>
<p>My short term plan on hand, my stomach full, and my body slightly rested, I set off for the location of the nearest money cache. Through dumb luck, I was already relatively close to the marked location on the map.</p>
<p>One short hour of light running brought me to the location. A standout hill in an otherwise unremarkable valley, at the top of the hill was a dead tree and a couple of boulders. If my information was correct the underside of one of the boulders would be a hollowed out segment with a near perfect fake covering.</p>
<p>The morning sun was still trying to claw its way into the sky as I made it the top of the hill. A quick round of knuckle tapping found the covering. It has the same texture and was perfectly covered, but when my hand tapped on it a hollow echo reached my ears. A knobby piece of rock jutted out of the segment, I grabbed it and pulled.</p>
<p>It shuttered a bit but otherwise didn't come loose. Several more tags earned me a similarly unsuccessful result. So I sat on the ground and braced my feet on the boulder and yanked with my body's full power. The cover came loose with a pop and flew backwards.</p>
<p>Groaning I pushed the now free slab of stone off my chest and examined the depression. Inside was a sack. I crawled over and pulled it out of the depression. It jingled in my hand. I opened it up. Inside was a collection of coins and banknotes that would sustain me moneywise at least for a year. Plenty of time to make it to a real cache, where I would have access to wealth that could make me generationally wealthy. I stashed the sack of money in my pack. I plugged the stone plate back into its spot. Having a personal place that was totally obscure and secure was worth the small amount of effort to wrestle the slab back into position. It was a tight fit, but I eventually got it in so that it was in a similar state to how I had found it.</p>
<p>I oriented myself towards the Land of Waterfalls and took off.</p>
<p>My bag now weighed down by the cash, I was now merrily dashing through the forest, my options limitless and my heart set on becoming a do-gooder. The world seemingly unable to let me have a small victory decided that it was the perfect time to start raining. My short lived good mood fell away as I continued at high speed. Kawaguchi's fort had resided in the Land of Hot Water, I had to get to a town in the Land of Waterfalls, this meant I would have to cut across the border between the Land of Sound and the Land of Fire, but I was confident I could blow through the two nations in under a couple hours. Chakra enhanced legs and endurance was such an amazing travel option. I knew that real ninja preferred hopping from tree to tree, but the prospect of falling and cracking my head open kept my feet firmly on the ground.</p>
<p>When I found the town that Tsunoda was in I would then figure out what the hell I was going to do, I did have to find and return the necklace that Old Salt had given to me, but I was alone right now and I needed to see a friend. Any friend, even if they still were part of an evil system. I would have enough money to live till doomsday if all the money caches contained as much as I had found in the cache to the west of the Fort. I would have money and information, maybe I could bring down the remains of the criminal cartel if Yamaguchi's death didn't already cause it to fully unwind. Maybe, I'd try taking down other cartels, I could also start my own charity or business. The world was my oyster, all that limited me was my imagination.</p>
<p>It seems I had gotten lost in my musings because I didn't notice that I was on an intersecting path with a person neither did the person react. It was only until I was a yard away that I noticed a guy with spiky black hair was right in front of me trudging along.</p>
<p>"Shit!" I cursed as I tried to adjust my course, however it was too late. The guy swung his head around and fixed me with two black eyes which began to widen as he processed the situation at the same time I did, but the laws of physics had already decreed what would happen. My chest slammed into his right shoulder, momentum being what it was, the spikey hair guy was launched sideways, right into a head level tree branch. His neck whiplashed sideways, and he spun in the air like a pinwheel before slamming to the ground on his chest, right into a scattering of sharp rocks. Whoops.</p>
<p>"Hey you alright?!" I yelled as I got my bearings. I got no response. The back of my mind began to tug at me as some piece of relevant information tried to fight its way into my consciousness.</p>
<p>"You okay?" I said again, kneeling down beside him. No response. I placed my finger on his neck, there was still a pulse. Well, he wasn't dead yet, but his neck was probably not in the best shape. I began to position myself so I could roll him over and check his frontal wounds, but that nagging bit of information finally fought its way to my consciousness. As my unfortunate friend tumbled through the air my eyes had caught a glimpse of something that made my throat tighten and blood run cold, there was a seal on his neck. Images flashed through my stream of thought, and I knew what I had to do for this victim of evil. I was going to break that seal, or die trying. I was not going to let another victim of a slave seal run to their doom. I wouldn't have a lot of time since it seemed like he was running from something, maybe his captors.</p>
<p>I rapidly pulled off his weird shirt, so I could get a look at the seal on his neck. It was a simple design on the 2d aspect, just three teardrops in a circle pattern, but a quick inspection with my hands leaking a bit of chakra gave me the impression that the seal was horrifically complex. This would not be a simple job, but something in me told me I could do it.</p>
<p>I took a moment to examine the seal in more detail, I ran my chakra through the construct and did a general body sweep. What I learned was not encouraging for my chances of breaking the seal.</p>
<p>In general it seemed like the seal had several functions, it took chakra from the body and converted it into a seemingly more powerful chakra, it leaked some of this chakra into the central nervous system, and it made some connection to something external, maybe a tracking seal. In short this was the perfect seal for some kind of slavery, it made the slave stronger, affected their mental state, and kept track of the slave's position.</p>
<p>The seal also had a lot of self-preservation methods built into the seal, any attempts to break up the internal machinery of the seal would cause the seal to pull more chakra from the body to reinforce it, while also it weaved tendrils of some kind to every piece of the boys chakra network so it could full pull on all his chakra. The final defense was that the seal somehow could take chakra meant to dispel it and convert it into its unique chakra as a means to reinforce the seal, so trying to brute force kill the seal would just cause it to first suck the slave dry of chakra and then turn the force trying to dispel as a form of fuel to sustain itself.</p>
<p>It was an apparently perfect lock, impossible for me to tear apart. At least if all I had learned was correct then in theory at least there was no way to safely conventionally break the seal. But much like as there was no such thing as an unsinkable ship there was also no such thing as an unpickable lock. If a lock was unpickable, you either needed a better set of tools or a shotgun. Lock makers always expected people to try the doors and give up, not blow a hole in the wall or chuck a brick through the window. I just needed to figure out where the window was and what I could use as a metaphorical brick.</p>
<p>A funny feeling that tugged at my attention made me examine one element of the seal in deeper fashion. A seal that used both the body's and dispeller's chakra to sustain itself, but what if it was fed bad chakra? My mouth curved upwards in a small grin. In a single moment an entire plan fell into place and I knew how to break the seal.</p>
<p>Chakra is an oversimplified name for the combination of two energies generated within the body, these being physical and spiritual. Now for these two energies to be of any use at all for doing useful things they must be combined together in a 1 to 1 ratio. This ratio then being chakra, which is used by everything, however the ratios don't have to be 1 to 1 for it to still be chakra, it's just that whenever the ratios of the energies aren't (or close to) 1 to 1 the chakra created from them is rather unstable and reactive.</p>
<p>Now because the body produces chakra at a 1 to 1 ratio and it's the only useful ratio for accomplishing anything not much thought is given to the properties of unbalanced chakra besides it being unstable, reactive, and explosive to an extent. So it's almost a base assumption that any jutsu or seal will be fed 1 to 1 ratio chakra, I mean what kind of knuckle dragger would feed a seal unbalanced chakra? It would completely tear up the internals of the seal and lead to damage of the medium it's constructed on, it would be utterly pointless. So obviously there's never any need to build a buffer system that would correct for unbalanced chakra, because like I said what kind of moron would do such a thing?</p>
<p>Hint, they had two thumbs and didn't give a fuck about any reasonable 'assumptions'. One time when my grandfather took me Ice fishing, I forgot to bring a lighter because I had assumed he would bring one. When we got the shack and found out we didn't have a way to start a fire in the potbelly oven. After teaching me a few new words I couldn't say in front of my mom he pointed at me.</p>
<p>"Boy, never make assumptions that you can't back up with facts. Here's an easy way to remember that truth. When you ASSUME you make an ass out of u" he jabs his finger at me, "and me," He points at himself. I did not contain my laughter, and it was a very cold day of fishing. But, his lesson had hit home and now I was going to make an ass out of who made this seal. I set to work with a grin.</p>
<p>In short order I had the three components I would need to break the seal. A chakra 'flare stack', an element that would pull most of the remaining boy's chakra reserves and burn them off as light and heat. A chakra interfacing point that would allow me to deposit chakra into the system that appeared to be the natural chakra of the boy, not outside chakra. Finally, I created a chakra 'de-ivy' mechanism to attack the seal directly.</p>
<p>This last element was the most complex, but it was critical to cracking the seal. From what I could see, the seal spread out tendrils of sort that wove themselves into the boy's chakra system, similar to how I've wove itself around a tree branch. These tendril's being the thing that could redirect chakra from the body into the seal for conversion. Now pulling down ivy from the bottom was always the hardest because the whole organism could rely on all its attachment points to keep it in place, but the newest branch of ivy was always the easiest to pull off while requiring the most energy on the ivy's part to reinforce and rebuild. So using the same metaphor I could use the smallest amount of chakra to pull apart the tendrils of the seal that would force the seal to expend the most energy it could to rebuild. So my seal would use a 'breadth-first' algorithm to search the tree of tendril's connections and nodes, identify a grouping of the furthest away (connection wise) from the seal, and use properly ratioed chakra to pull them apart. So I would be using the smallest amount of energy to take apart the areas that would require the most energy to rebuild on the seal's part.</p>
<p>In summary the whole process would go as follows. I would use the flare stack to burn off the vast majority of remaining chakra in the boy and then consistently burn whatever he would generate after wards. Then I would fill the buffer in the chakra interface point with 5 to 1 physical to spiritual chakra and keep supplying it as it was consumed by the seal. Finally, I would activate my de-ivy seal that would begin to pull apart the seal's tendril's. It would go for the tendrils that would require the most energy to rebuild while requiring the least energy from me to pull apart. Hopefully this would cause the seal to react appropriately which would probably be something like.</p>
<p>"Holy Shit! I'm being attacked! I need energy right away! Hey here's a bunch of chakra conveniently placed for the very purpose of repairing the tendrils of the seal, I better use it!"</p>
<p>Now, when the seal tries to process the unbalanced chakra in its delicate and complicated inner workings. It should do something akin to running nitroglycerin through a distillery, with predictably destructive results. So this should cause the seal's self-repair functions to kick in which should go like.</p>
<p>"Holy Shit! My insides have become damaged somehow! I better used some of this conveniently placed chakra to repair myself so I can keep converting all this free chakra to reinforce the tendrils!"</p>
<p>Simultaneously, while this cycle is repeating itself my attack seal will continue to pry the tendrils of the seal away from the boy's own chakra network. Each tendril removed in turn made the other tendrils both easier to remove and more costly to repair. However, since the seal would be busy continuously destroying itself by absorbing more unbalanced chakra it would be unable to perform repairs on the tendril network. Thus, causing a death spiral that would hopefully allow me to destroy the seal. And somehow things actually went according to plan.</p>
<p>It was tiring work no doubt, but I could see the network of tendrils emanating from the seal retract out of the boy's body. It was a bit of a tense moment to remove the tendrils from the chakra coils and other key organs of the chakra system, but it was no problem and soon I had the entirety of the tendrils destroyed.</p>
<p>I let out a whoop of excitement. I was almost done; the seal was doomed now! There was a significant amount of tissue damage around the seal, but the entirety of the seal matrix had been broken and was disintegrating before my eyes as it entered a full death spiral. It continued to pull the unbalanced chakra from my right hand into itself, which continued to do more damage to the internal machinery of the seal than it could hope to repair using the chakra it had taken. The markings of the seal continued to fade until only a dot was left and then something odd started happening. It stopped shrinking.</p>
<p>I felt a new burst of chakra within the seal, which didn't make any sense because I had already bled the seal dry. Where was it getting new chakra from? If the seal didn't evaporate and I couldn't pull it apart then it could pull me dry until I passed out and then start feeding on the kids' reserves again. But, where was this new chakra from? It didn't make any sense, all the chakra in the localized energy system had been burned away, unless new chakra was appearing out of nowhere then what was occurring was impossible.</p>
<p>Ever newer chakra began to build in the single remaining part of the seal, and began to repair the damage I had done. I began to sweat. If I didn't somehow find a way to smush out this last little dot of seal, things would start to go very badly. I was already beginning to feel the bite of my own chakra pool begin to bottom out. Images of new elements to add to the counter-seal flashed through my mind as I tried to figure out a way to salvage the situation. I would have to cut it close, but I had to do something to save the situation.</p>
<p>But, as soon as I began to realize my limited options, the flow of new chakra coming out of nowhere stopped. It's flow of free energy gone; the seal began to steal from my unbalanced chakra again. The repairs it had managed with its free energy were undone and the last tracking element began to fully break down. It was done. I went to raise my free hand in victory, but something came out of the seal. It was a snake.</p>
<p>I hate snakes. I especially hate snakes that pop out of random seals placed upon slaves that try to bite me, so I especially hated this snake. It leaped at me; fangs extended.</p>
<p>In all my bravery, I let out a high pitched yelp and slapped the snake with all my strength. It sailed into the forest. My chakra enhanced strength had sent it flying like it was a homerun baseball.</p>
<p>I looked down at the guy. He was still passed out. His shoulder area seemed to be really messed up, the tissue color was a combination of inflamed red and purples. Whatever my unbalanced chakra had done to the internals of the seal, it had also messed up the flesh of where my counter seal had been placed. I suddenly realized why people didn't try to break seals like these using unbalanced chakra, but it had worked.</p>
<p>I put the guys weird shirt back on him and began to weigh my options. I had nearly drained him completely dry of chakra, he had sustained a substantial head injury, and his body was already covered in scratches. I needed to get him out of the rain and fast, but whoever had owned him would want him back so I had to go somewhere that wouldn't report or spread around that I had an unconscious guy roughly my age. Fortunately, in my readings for Kawaguchi I had learned about a network of inns that if paid extra would look the other way to the status of the occupants, one of which was located close by in the Land of Fire.</p>
<p>I slung the kid over my shoulder and took off towards my new destination. A mid-sized town called Kohama, it was on the border between the Land of Sound and Fire, it held the Happy Morning Inn which had been an often used safe house for Kawaguchi's men. Now that distinction held less importance, but they still were able to keep quiet for a small price which was a premium I needed.</p>
<p>I managed to make it to the outskirts of Kohama by nightfall. The Happy Morning Inn was easy to find considering it had one of the tallest signs in all of the south side of Kohama. The desk receptionist seemingly unfazed by me lugging an unconscious body over my shoulder, I claimed he had been a traveling companion who had been struck unconscious by fever. The rain still continued to pour so it was easy for the receptionist to both accept my explanation and accept my paying an extra sum over the room cost for 'no disturbances so my friend could rest.'</p>
<p>I managed to haul him to a room. It had 2 beds, a desk, a bathroom, and a couch. We were both soaked to bone by the several hours of running through the rain. So I undressed the spiked hair kid to his under-garments, toweled him off and placed him in bed. Thankfully showers were common in this world, so the bathroom was equipped with one that I used to rinse off the muck and grime of 2 days in the wilderness. Dinner was the trail food I had in my travel pack prepared by Old Salt. I tried not to think about him as I scarfed down the variety of nuts, grains, and dried meat.</p>
<p>My dinner finished and I collapsed into bed and promptly fell asleep. I thankfully didn't dream that night.</p>
<p> ----------------<br/>
</p>
<p>
  <b>September 14th Midday, 2016 RY</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Kohama, The Happy Morning Inn</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Rented Room</b>
</p>
<p>It was late mid-morning when I finally managed to wake up. In fairness I had been awake for nearly two whole days, broken a slave seal, and ran across a portion of a continent. I was still tired, but at this point my hunger was greater. I got up, stretched, and went on the hunt for food. Luckily, the Happy Morning Inn had its own kitchen which was happy to set me up with two bowls of meat stew and rice for only a slight overcharging of the fair price. I was too tired and hungry to care, but I did take note that hunting for breakfast beyond the walls of the inn would be prudent.</p>
<p>Using a provided tray I was able to easily ferry my successful hunt back to the room. I set the bowls for the spiky hair guy on his bedside table, figuring that the smell might coax him to consciousness. For my own bowl I simply just ate at the desk. The stew was mediocre, but it was the only real thing I had eaten in two days, so I wolfed it down, nonetheless. The carnage wrought upon my meal was immense. So much so that as I was scrapping the last bit of broth out of the bowl that I heard a set of groans erupt behind me. Looking around I saw the eyes of the spiky haired guy flutter. I rushed over to his bedside; his eye's rapidly focused on me.</p>
<p>"Who are you?" The guy's voice sounded dry.</p>
<p>"Hold on, drink this," I held a small glass of water up to his mouth. It parted and I carefully poured the liquid.</p>
<p>"Who are you?" His voice was a lot clearer.</p>
<p>"I'm Roger." I said cheerfully.</p>
<p>"Where am I?"</p>
<p>"The town of Kohama, the Happy Morning Inn" I answered.</p>
<p>"How did I get here?"</p>
<p>"I ran into you, picked you up and carried you here. You took a nasty conk on the head, also I broke that slave seal on your neck so you're free. No more slavery," I said with a satisfied grin. His eyes widened.</p>
<p>"Slave seal?"</p>
<p>"Yeah, the one of your neck right there," I pointed at the place of the former seal. I saw him close his eyes then wince. "Yeah, there was some tissue damage in the removal process, but it's totally gone now." I added.</p>
<p>"Who are you with?" That question took me by surprise.</p>
<p>"Who am I with? What does that mean?" I asked.</p>
<p>"What village are you with?" He clarified.</p>
<p>"Village? You mean like a hidden village?" I ventured. He nodded.</p>
<p>"Nobody, I'm just a guy on the run like you are, though I'm not running from anything literal. If that makes any sense?" The guy was silent. So I asked a couple of questions.</p>
<p>"So what's your name?" I asked. The guy's eyes which had zoned out for a bit focused back on my face. A moment of silence passed.</p>
<p>"Sasuke, Sasuke Uchiha," He answered. His eyes were boring straight into me. I blinked. He blinked. I blinked again.</p>
<p>"Cool name I guess, my full name is Roger Walker. I'm not from around here," I answered. Something in my answer put him at ease, because tension that I hadn't noticed before released and he sank back into his bed. A moment of silence followed.</p>
<p>"Well I got you some stew, and you won't heal without any nutrients. So will it be okay if I feed you, at least for today?"</p>
<p>Sasuke nodded. I picked up the bowl and began to feed him the stew. We did this in silence. Once the bowl had been cleaned dry, he rolled over without a word and fell asleep. I didn't blame him one bit. I took both bowl's downstairs and explored the town.</p>
<p> ---------------------</p>
<p><br/>
</p>
<p>
  <b>September 17th Midday, 2016 RY</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Kohama</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Town Streets</b>
</p>
<p>The next couple of days went remarkably similar, Sasuke and I would chat a bit before breakfast, then he would sleep. I learned remarkably little about him, he was 13, on the run from someone, and a quiet guy all around. For my own part I had regaled him with my tale of my time with Kawaguchi, I left out how I had come to be in Kawaguchi's custody just saying I had gotten lost in an inopportune time. He hadn't pressed me for the details.</p>
<p>In turn I hadn't pressed him for details of how he had come to be a slave on the run, we all had our own stories to tell in due time. What was concerning though was that the dead tissue around the area of the seal hadn't appeared to be healing so I was checking out the local library for any kind of hints that could be used.</p>
<p>The town library was a rustic building. It was seemingly not used often, but it was staffed. A bored looking teenager sat behind a desk, reading a book.</p>
<p>"Excuse me where are the books on medicine?" I asked. The teen lazily pointed to his right.</p>
<p>"Row 30," He grumbled, not even looking up from the book he was reading.</p>
<p>"Thanks," I said, turning right and heading off in search of the row. I looked around, but generally I was focused on the question of if I was going to be able to help fix Sasuke's shoulder wound myself or if I would have to find a doctor who could do it. My eyes drifted around aimlessly as I walked.</p>
<p>I made it to row thirty then stopped. Something was pulling at my attention, I turned around and looked back. The hallway was empty. The feeling didn't go away. I back-tracked, focusing on looking at all pieces of my surroundings. The feeling intensified when I reached row 13, I looked down the row of bookshelves. Nothing seemed off besides a painting on the wall at the end of the row, my instincts screamed at me to investigate. I walked down the row. My eyes scanning the book spines for anything that would jump out to me, nothing did.</p>
<p>When my eyes actually took in the details of the painting, my breath caught in my chest. The picture was a natural still life, it was a hill with trees and fluffy clouds but in the shape of the clouds, trees and grass shading were letters, Latin letters. The made a sentence.</p>
<p>"If can read, find book Kohama Local Recipes for Good Wives." I was dumbstruck. This was impossible. Maybe, I was just going crazy. I rubbed my eyes. The letters were still there, made of clouds, shaped tree branches, rocks, and shadows, but they were distinct.</p>
<p>In a half sleep haze I walked back towards the front desk.</p>
<p>"Excuse me again, do you have a book called 'Kohama Local Recipes for Good Wives'?" I asked.</p>
<p>"Yep, got twenty copies of em, row 5." The teenager pointed to his left.</p>
<p>"Thanks," I heard myself say. I walked to the row. One shelf was nothing, but copies of "Kohama Local Recipes for Good Wives.' Listlessly, I pulled one of the books off of the shelf. The title was on the front, but around it was a black and red border square. Inside were letter's disguised among other shapes. They formed a title.</p>
<p>'A guide, recounting, and warning for those who can read the letters of Earth'</p>
<p>I opened it. Inside was a foreword for the cookbook, and for the hidden book laid out in the border as a bunch of decorations on the edge of the page.</p>
<p>"If you can read this it means one of two things either I wasn't through enough or others have found a way across the great gap. If you are the former there is nothing in this book you will learn, if you are the latter take this book as a warning of what happened when the crew of the SS Fairfield and SM UL-20 disappeared from the face of the Earth on October 14th, 1916. Let their mistakes ward you off of the course they took, for if not my prayers have not been answered and more strife and suffering may soon follow."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So begins the main plot! Yes, Sasuke will be more of a main character in this story. However, this does not mean I am short circuiting the entirety of the plot that relates to Orochimaru and Sasuke, next chapter you should see hints of how that plot line will be able to progress normally. Also, just to state upfront this is not a romantic pairing. I have other general idea's what to do in the future in terms of personal relationships, but that's a bit off. For now, lets just follow the journey and see what mess the earlier people from Earth have managed to create.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 4: Kicking the Hornets Nest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Preceding Authors Note: ----- Holy god this chapter was just an absolute pain to write, what I thought would be a simple 5k chapter ballooned into this 14k monster. Yeesh. Anyway, I’ll have a full author’s note at the end. Please Enjoy</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b></b>
</p>
<p><b>September 17th Midday, 2016 RY<br/>
</b>
 <b>Kohama<br/>
</b>
 <b>Library</b></p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>It was a good thing that the library was deserted, otherwise I’m sure my mutterings would have drawn attention. It was an odd look for a teenager to be muttering to themself while holding a cookbook. I snapped the book shut. I would have to read over it somewhere else, while I could definitely memorize it all right here on the spot. Actually, having the book with me would make the process of transcribing everything and finding any other hidden details easier. </p>
<p>I glanced around. No one was watching, and for a half second I considered just pilfering the book outright. The thought of Old Salt judging me though for not even trying to get it legally wayed me off that course of action. I returned to the front desk and the bored teenager behind it. </p>
<p>“Excuse me, how can I check out this book?” The teenager didn’t look up from his book.</p>
<p>“Do you have a card?” He muttered.</p>
<p>“No sorry, I’m new to town,” I lied. This caused the teenager to look up and focus on me. His eyes narrowed as he focused on the book in my hand. His face scrunched up for a second then returned to normal.</p>
<p>“Drop 600 ryo in the fee jar and just take it. Unfortunately, it seems that particular copy of the book was lost in reshelving, what a shame to lose such a rare and valuable book,” He said, the words dripping with contempt and sarcasm. Guess, he didn’t like cookbooks that much. I found the desired amount of money, dumped it in the jar and left the library. I rushed back to the Inn.</p>
<p>Sasuke was passed out in his bed. I sat down at the desk, set both the book and my notepad down, and began to read.</p>
<p>“Dear Reader, if you have not been warned off by the foreword, let me reiterate you should do your best to take what you read in here and disregard it as of any use, besides as a warning. If the information encoded inside is fragmentary or doesn't make sense, I recommend finding older editions of the book. I have done my best to ensure that it is not changed after my death, but one never knows with long term preservation. Anyway, my name is Albert Buckley. I was a cabin boy on the SS Fairfield, when it “disappeared.” I will give a brief accounting of how we came to be here. If you are from Earth I would hope you know of The Great War, if not then imagine a war in which millions upon millions of soldiers were fighting and dying for no appreciable gain. It was a calamity that would doom the European civilization to eternal nothingness. So when a cadre of scientists came to the heads of states of the Entente powers, with a proposal for an expedition that could yield incredible energy and power that could be used to break the stalemate, and only for the cost of a single ship, some specialized equipment, and some protection, it was an easy decision. It was definitely a one in a million gamble, but if it paid off it could have ended the war within a week, or at least that's what they and us were told when we first set off. We did find something though, a whole new world filled with people who had incredible powers, powers that we could and did learn. That's where all the trouble started, we learned how to make things, we managed to make weapons that could call down the apocalypse on both ourselves and our enemies. </p>
<p>“What's an apocalypse?” A voice asked. I jerked around as I saw Sasuke standing up looking over my shoulder. I looked back down at my notepad. My dumbass had been naturally writing in the local language not English, when untranslatable words were needed I just wrote out the character that made the closest sounds. I had just spilled the beans of a world shifting secret to some guy I had saved.</p>
<p>“Erm, it's a uh a thing,” I waffled trying to stall for time as I searched for a reasonable excuse.</p>
<p>“We managed to make weapons that could call down the apocalypse on both ourselves and our enemies, that sounds pretty important,” Sasuke posited. I was screwed. I mentally flipped a coin. Tell the truth or spin more bullshit. I landed on ‘Tell the half-truth’.</p>
<p>“It is, honestly I don’t understand this much that well myself. I’m really not from around these parts so it's kind of confusing, but I’ll do my best,” I said before launching to a half explanation of my disappearance from my world, my time with Kawaguchi, my training with Old Salt, and why I was on the run when I ran into him. I told him how I broke the seal, took him here to be healed and how I had found this book. He asked several questions and I answered them as best I could. At the end of it he conceded that it could be true, and that it explained a lot of things about how we had come to this point in time.</p>
<p>“Anyway all that aside, how's your shoulder? I think removing that slave seal caused some damage in your shoulder and I’ve been worrying about the tissue not healing.” I asked.</p>
<p>“It's fine, “He responded, covering his shoulder with hand, before cursing and yanking it away.</p>
<p>“It’s clearly not, now stop being a weenie and let me take a look.” I said as I stood up. Sasuke didn’t move.</p>
<p>“Come on, the flesh was as dark as a bowling ball, it's clearly not a little scrape. Now lemme see, I need to make a run for medical supplies, and I need to know what to get to treat it,” I fixed Sasuke with a firm stare. He grunted and slid his hand off his shoulder. I closed the distance to examine it.</p>
<p>Underneath was a site that did not inspire confidence, a purple and black patch covered the general area around the seal, around that was red inflamed skin. It was most certainly not getting better, and I had no idea how to treat it. </p>
<p>“Yeah, this is worse than how I remember it a couple of days ago. The blood vessels leading away from the area are getting inflamed, which is definitely not a good sign. We need to take you to a doctor. This is the kind of thing that can kill you in numerous unfun ways,” I detailed. Sasuke didn’t say anything. I turned my gaze towards his face. He wore a stony facade.</p>
<p>“I take it you don’t prefer going to the doctor?” I questioned, my eyebrows raising.</p>
<p>“No, that would unideal,” Sasuke didn’t elaborate further.</p>
<p>“Because?” I prompted.</p>
<p>“Reasons,” He responded.</p>
<p>“Uh huh, well then I guess I have reason to knock your ass out and drag you there myself, because there's no way in hell that your skin tone should match Barney the-fucking-dinosaurs” I shot back. Sasuke’s growing scowl twisted into confusion. </p>
<p>“Reference from where I come from, doesn't matter. Anyway, this is serious, like if this isn't treated and doesn't get better it will most definitely kill you. Are you sure you won’t go to the doctor?” I asked. He nodded.</p>
<p>“Okay compromise if we don’t see any improvement by tomorrow we are going to the doctor. I saved your ass once; I’m not going to let you kill yourself by being a nutjob. Sounds good?” I pierced him with a stern gaze, the fact that I was a head taller than him and more muscular made the intimidation easier. </p>
<p>He sighed and nodded. </p>
<p>“Good, now I’m going to head out and try and find some medicine to treat whatever that is,” I said leaving the room to hunt for medicine once more.</p>
<p>-------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>
  <b></b>
</p>
<p><b>September 24th Morning, 2016 RY<br/>
</b>
<b>Kohama<br/>
</b>
<b>Market</b></p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>The splotch did not improve. I had only managed to convince Sasuke to go to the doctor, by saying we could use fake names, and I would handle all the payment issues. The doctor, an old white haired fellow, was similarly unhelpful with the splotch. He did confirm it was a patch of utterly dead tissue, but his only suggestion was to go see a specialist in one of the major cities. He wrote down both of our basic information with instructions to return and see him if things did not improve within a week's time.<br/>
In the meanwhile, with the secret of both my origins and that of the book out, Sasuke became a confidant and helper when it came to translating and making sense of what else was in the book.</p>
<p>I doubted that he actually understood what I had told him in regards to being from another world, and that ancient ancestors of mine had come here before, but with the mention of weapons and other devices he seemed happy to just ignore the strangeness of my situation and work towards our common goal. </p>
<p>For my own part, I was curious what his story was considering the state I had found him in and his reticence for seeing doctors. On the one hand he still could have been an escaped slave, and all of his behavior would line up with that conclusion. The problem was that he didn’t act like, though to be fair I’ve never met an escaped slave so what do I know, but there seemed to be too much confidence and self-assuredness in the way he acted and talked. He was too calm to be someone on the run who had no way to defend themselves. Though did it really matter? He didn't seem too inclined to screw me over. So why should I dig deeper into what his real motives were?</p>
<p>Either way, my previous goal of finding Tsunoda had gone out the window at least temporarily. The discovery that people from my presumable world had found a way here voluntarily, had several implications and posed many more questions. The most important thing though, was that I was not an aberration, and that there was a way to voluntarily make one's way from my world to this world. Prime question being if there was a way to do it in reverse and go from this world back to my own. If that was the case, then these people were my ticket to getting the hell out of here. No killing, no fighting, and no running for my life as my mentor commits suicide by enemy. Sure, it would be me breaking my promise to him, but hey maybe I could bring back proof and force the UN to intervene and do some peace keeping thingy. That could fulfil my promise and also make me not have to fight and kill.</p>
<p>I was only lying to myself and I knew it, but I also didn't care.</p>
<p>‘I’m 14, how am I supposed to know any better?’ I would tell myself, knowing I knew better.</p>
<p>Despite my own internal reservations about what I would do if I found a way to get out of this world, Sasuke and I worked feverishly on the book. He was a quick study and quickly understood all the letters and their meanings, so he would help me by writing them down on a piece of paper while I would translate them into the local language. His knowledge on the geography, politics, and local common sense was invaluable in making sense of translation. By the time we had finished we had learned a lot, but that had only left us with exponentially more questions.</p>
<p>In general, the story as we understood it went as follows.</p>
<p>A gaggle of scientists and soldiers arrived in this new world. They found inhabitants that looked like them, but who could wield amazing powers to do amazing things. Initially, they worked together with the local inhabitants to solve problems, fight enemies, and generally get along. Simultaneously, they were learning both how to make use of the amazing power afforded by chakra, but also figuring out how to build machines and technologies that would work in concert with chakra to do utterly incredible things. However, the scientists learned something that was an existential apocalyptic threat to everyone and everything, even those back home at earth. This broke their cooperative lethargy, and they began building weapons and other cruel machines to combat this threat. This brought them into conflict with the locals, and then each other. Things got messy, and very bloody. In the end one of them managed to win somehow and then sequestered the important things in a safe location. Here the author told us that samples of the weaponry, medical devices, and a fully complete history of events was located. They beckoned those who could understand this book to seek out this location, gain access to the vault and then use the sequestered information, devices, and weapons to do something that would save the world from the existential threat. </p>
<p>The book was infuriatingly vague on all the important details except one, the location of the vault. Conveniently, the vault itself was located nearby, in a valley nearby the river that flowed through this very town. It was carved into the hillside and it contained a “puzzle” that only someone who understood English would be able to solve. This was nice because the explicit mention of a medical device within the vault had the chance to solve the issue with Sasuke's shoulder, I hoped that I could find details that would help me figure a way home. So we both agreed that we would try and find the vault after Sasuke’s last checkup with the doctor. That was the plan at least.</p>
<p>This particular morning I had planned to do nothing but workout and eat. Since arriving, I had made it a routine to go on morning runs around the town, to gain information and because the exercise made me feel good. </p>
<p>“Going out running, wanna come?” I offered Sasuke as I stretched in the room.</p>
<p>“No,” He murmured. He had never agreed to come running, and I couldn’t fault him for it, he was injured. It was just nicer to run with a partner than alone.</p>
<p>“Suit yourself, see ya later,” I said over my shoulder as I left the room.</p>
<p>I made my way out in front of the Inn and took off in a random direction. It was amazing what a little running would do for the mind. The slowly building uncurrent of confusion and self-doubt melted away as my everything became just putting one foot in front of the other. My memories would sometimes intrude, they never weren’t pulling at me in some way, but I had somehow begun to tune them out, a process that became easier when I was doing some kind of physical activity. It's partially why I had become so invested in sports; it was a way I could tune out the cacophony of memories. It was odd, the thing that made me so good at some sports was also a thing that sports helped me run away from, life sure did have a sense of humor.<br/>
I was snapped out of my musings, by a back of the head warning that something had changed. The rhythmic sound of my footfalls had changed, a different set of rhythmic beats was accompanying my own to the left of me. Turning my head to my left I stumbled in my run ever so slightly as my eyes figured out the reason for the auditory disturbance. </p>
<p>To my left, running in stride with me, was a short girl with a blonde ponytail that bounced in rhythm to her footfalls. Her eyes which had been focused ahead turned to meet my gaze as my stumble alerted her to my new knowledge of her presence. </p>
<p>“I was wondering when you’d notice, are you always so stuck in your own head?” She asked, her lips forming a mirthful smile.</p>
<p>“Always, it's how I come up with witty one liners. Do you always join up besides anyone who’s taking a jog?” I shot back with an equally mirthful smile.</p>
<p>“Oh we have a wise guy over here, and not only if they are cute and look like they can keep up with me,” She reposted. I chuckled.</p>
<p>“You move fast huh, first you call me cute, then what? I end up paying for coffee and chocolate at this nice little breakfast place you know of for just such an occasion?” I said in a sarcastic tone.</p>
<p>“If you can keep up with me and your offering to pay then I’ll consider it,” She said in between breaths.</p>
<p>“Well, we’re both lucky I usually get breakfast after my run anyway. So, I think we will both be happy by the end of this morning,” I mentioned.</p>
<p>“Oh, how do you figure that?” She inquired.</p>
<p>“Well, you’ll get a free meal and drink out of me, a cute boy as I recall you saying, and I get to jog and have breakfast with a cute girl. We both win here,” I remarked. Now usually, I’d be a bit more guarded when talking to the fairer sex, but the distinct lack of interaction with said fairer sex, and the runners high I was feeling filled me with an ocean’s worth of bravado and confidence. She gave a short whistle in response.</p>
<p>“Good to know you're not blind to what your eyes can see, I think that does sound like a win-win situation. Are you a visitor to Kohama?” She inquired.</p>
<p>“Visitor,” I answered.</p>
<p>“You here alone or with any competiti- I mean company,” She joked. I laughed.</p>
<p>“I’m here with a friend. HE, just needed some rest and to see a doctor,” I said emphasizing the maleness of the grumpy friend stuck in the Inn.</p>
<p>“Sooo, not competition?” She verbally jabbed. I let out a snort.</p>
<p>“No not competition, why do I seem like the type?” I asked with genuine curiosity.</p>
<p>“No, it's just there's always at least one thing odd with everybody, you seem like the full package so I was wondering if you’re flaw was playing for the team that wouldn’t have interest in me.” She admitted.</p>
<p>“You’re really blunt and upfront about things?” I probed.</p>
<p>“It's the only way to get through the thick skulls of most guys,” She stated with absolute certainty. I laughed.</p>
<p>“Fair enough,” I conceded. </p>
<p>We continued to run and verbally spar. I learned she was a local girl, she liked hot chocolate, and that her name was Ino. In turn I shared my name, a sanitized (read: a total lie) version of how I had come to be there, and I was a fan of scrambled eggs. Our run took us to an empty clearing of dirt and grass. We slowed to stop and caught our breath. Once my breathing had started to slow Ino stepped in front of me and fixed me with a gaze. She looked me up and down then nodded to herself. A wry grin formed on her lips.</p>
<p>“Think you can handle a couple push-ups?” She teased.</p>
<p>“I think I can handle more than you expect,” I shot back, a cocky grin plastering my face.</p>
<p>“Oh, you must think you're very big and strong, huh? We’ll see,” She said in a faux mocking tone.</p>
<p>I dropped down into the familiar form, that every coach would swear wasn’t straight enough even if a ruler laid flat indicated otherwise.</p>
<p>“I’ll lead, One!” Ino called.</p>
<p>I pumped my arms up and down.</p>
<p>“Two!”</p>
<p>I pumped my arms up and down. I raised my head for a second to see if Ino was following along, I saw that she was going along with the count among other things my eyes noticed. I dropped my head once more and just focused on the ground.<br/>
It was around 45 when my arms began to quake. Fortunately, at 50 she said that was enough. I suggested sit ups, she offered to hold my feet. I was able to get 50 with her helping keep my feet on the ground, she matched me at 50. It was at that point my stomach rumbled, I had been out longer than expected and my stomach was angry at the delay in nutrition. She chuckled at my stomachs anger, until her stomach grumbled in anger. I had the good graces to not say anything.</p>
<p>“So you mentioned breakfast?” I floated.</p>
<p>“I did, and isn’t it lucky that I have just the place in mind, assuming you're paying,” She did an exaggerated eye flutter at me. I let out an exaggerated sigh.</p>
<p>“Well, if it's the only way to keep the company of a girl such as yourself, then I supposed my wallet can take the hit,” I grumbled in the moodiest tone I could manage.</p>
<p>“Oh, I’m sure you can survive a little breakfast bill,” She teased.</p>
<p>“I suppose, the things men do to please women are the heaviest of burdens,” I bemoaned. </p>
<p>“Who says, I’m not already pleased?” She teased.</p>
<p>“Who says the burden is lighter when the woman is pleased?” I sniped back.</p>
<p>“Tread carefully you may be cute, but that doesn't make you invulnerable,” She warned.</p>
<p>“I yield!” I threw up my arms in mock surrender.</p>
<p>“Are you gonna keep messing around or are you going to go on a breakfast date with yours truly,” She motioned to herself.</p>
<p>“Oh so it's a date now?” I inquired.</p>
<p>“If you're smart about it and keep being charming, then maybe it will be a date,” She opined.</p>
<p>“Duly noted, lead the way,” I gestured towards town, a big grin plastered to my face.</p>
<p>We walked back to town; we talked the whole way. It was fun, really fun. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the company of a fun, witty, and genuinely interesting person. The burdens and mental strain that I hadn’t noticed eating away at me, fell away and I stood a little taller as we walked home. It was a moment of serenity and joy. </p>
<p>I noticed that the place she was taking me too was in the same district as the Inn. The roads were mostly empty as everyone had already rushed off to work and the midday shopping rush wouldn't start for another 3 hours. </p>
<p>“So what is this place called anyway?” I asked, </p>
<p>“You’ll see,” She said in a sing-song voice, my stomach did a flip flop at her words.</p>
<p>“It’s right nearby let me show you a shortcut,” Ino grabbed my left hand and pulled me forward as she led right into a deserted side alleyway. She let go of my hand and jogged ahead of me.</p>
<p>“Over here!” She beckoned to me to jog with her, so I did. All of a sudden the back of my head began to howl in alarm, something felt wrong. This was confusing, I was just in a deserted alleyway with a cute girl leading me to a breakfast place. My spine shivered, and the voice in the back of my head broke into my stream of consciousness.</p>
<p>‘She’s leading you into a trap you idiot! We aren't alone!’ Too late.</p>
<p>My body came to a screaming halt as a tingly energy froze me solid.</p>
<p>“Shadow Possession complete,” a male voice from behind me stated. </p>
<p>“Wha?” I yelped. </p>
<p>“Good job Ino,” A older male voice came from ahead of me as an older man stepped out behind a wall.</p>
<p>“What took you so long? I’ve been standing out here for ages,” the male voice from behind me complained. My eyes locked on Ino as she turned around in front of me, her eyes having gone hard with determination.</p>
<p>“I’m a skilled craftswoman so if you think you can tell me how to fool a guy, then I’m all ears Shika,”</p>
<p>“Ino, can you confirm the details we were given by the source?” The older man asked.</p>
<p>“He admitted to traveling with someone who needed rest and medical attention, so it does line up with the sources report,” Ino commented, her voice carrying a steel edge.</p>
<p>“Asuma-sensei I can confirm nobody is around,” a quiet voice belonging to a dark haired girl.</p>
<p>“Excellent, Shino can you confirm the scent of our target is on him?” The older man named Asuma said.</p>
<p>A brown haired kid with sunglasses and an oversized jacket stepped forward and held out his hand, a beetle took off and landed on my chest. The eyebrows of the sunglasses kid knitted together for a second then relaxed.</p>
<p>“I can confirm the scent of Sasuke Uchiha, is on him and is recent,” He said in a flat monotone. The name of Sasuke being dropped made the pieces all fall into place, these must have been the people who had put the slave seal on him. They were the slave catchers sent after Sasuke. These were the same group of people that had put that seal on that one girl that Kawaguchi had ‘rewarded’ me with, these were fucking scum. The worst evil bastards on the planet and now they were back for their ‘property.’ As the puzzle came together, all the emotional energy behind my confusion, bewilderment, and betrayal untied into single emotion, fury.</p>
<p>“Good, okay since we have confirmed the target's location we can start with phase two. Ino?” Asuma prompted.</p>
<p>“Ready!” She said standing in front of me, she wore an evil grin like a cat catching a mouse.</p>
<p>“Anything you want to say?” Asuma the Slaver asked me.</p>
<p>“I get it now; you guys are the fake excuses of humanity that put that fucking slave seal on him. You people are the fucking shitstains that enslave free people and sell them to the highest bidder, does that make you feel good? Selling little boys and girls to whichever old fat man can pay the most? You must be pissed that I broke that slave seal on his shoulder, well too fucking bad! Because I swear I’m going to beat you evil fuckers into pulp and then feed you to the fucking pigs! You better finish me off, or else I’m going to return with a fucking vengeance!” I howled in rage, all the emotions that I had locked away came rushing to the top. The emotions from being snatched away from my family, the emotion of seeing a fucking slave girl, the emotion of learning that there was doomsday threat hanging over the heads of my whole planet. All of the bottled up feelings that I had pushed aside to keep myself alive came rushing into my head to tell me one thing.</p>
<p>‘Break this grasp and beat the living hell out of these evil bastards!’ I strained against the invisible bindings that held me, I pushed with all my strength both chakra and physical to break the binding and fight. My rage drove me to give 110% so I did, and that was enough. I started to move, slowly, and forcefully but I was yanking the jaws that held me apart with pure rage.</p>
<p>“Do it fast! He’s starting to break free of the jutsu,” the voice from behind me groaned.</p>
<p>The slavers in front of me though looked troubled, my outburst of rage had seemingly struck them dumb with confusion and trepidation. Whatever they had expected me to say, I had gone in a completely different direction. The grip on my body began to collapse as I took a single step forward.</p>
<p>“Ino!” The voice behind me yelled in alarm. This snapped her out of the hesitant confusion that had taken grasp of her.</p>
<p>“Right!” Her hands formed an odd looking seal aimed at me.</p>
<p>“Mind Transfer Jutsu!” She yelled, as a pulse of energy emanated from her and sped towards me.</p>
<p>“What the fu-,” was all that I could get out of my mouth before the energy pulse slammed into my body, and I was all of sudden at war with myself.</p>
<p>It was an odd experience, it was like my mind's hands were ripped off the controls of my muscles, and senses. I was cut adrift of my own body and forced down deep into a place I didn’t know existed. A deep unawareness, more cutoff than anything else I had ever experienced.<br/>
-----------------------------<br/>
 <b>September 24th Midmorning, 2016 RY<br/> </b>
 <b>?<br/> </b>
 <b>?</b></p><p>
  
</p>
<p>I awoke to find myself in a grey room with a door. The shift of perspective was jarring, and I collapsed on the ground. I was supposed to be in the clutches of those slavers, why was in a room.</p>
<p>My head swiveled as I searched for details that could help me figure out what was going on, and where I was located. I was thoroughly disappointed; it was just a grey concrete room with overhead lighting. I started to rise to my feet as the door burst open to reveal a standing figure, me. The eyes of me locked on to me and he stormed into the room.</p>
<p>“Be quiet we don’t have much time, let me help you up and then we can walk and talk,” He raised a finger to my mouth as I was already starting to form a question. Instead, I nodded, took the hand he offered and rose to my feet.</p>
<p>“Good, it seems like our body has been taken over and you’ve been pushed out of control. I have a plan to fix that, but I need your help. Got it?” He asked me. I nodded.</p>
<p>“So are you my subconscious or something?” I asked as we jogged out the door into a long blank corridor. He laughed.</p>
<p>“Hell no! I’ve never even met the subconscious, I mean that's why they call it the subconscious, it's the foundation of the conscious mind.” He responded.</p>
<p>“Then what are you?” I asked, keeping pace with him as he jogged.</p>
<p>“I’m the fragment of your conscious mind that is constantly doing maintenance and queuing up memories,” He responded.</p>
<p>“Isn’t that the subconsciouses job?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Usually, yes. But, we are different, we remember everything and anything. All of our experiences constantly being so fresh it was as if we experienced them just the second before! So before it was the job of the subconscious to queue up memories, sort information, and generally do all the low level processing that goes unnoticed in everyday life. But, when we started remembering everything that lazy fuck, threw up his hands and outsourced the entire job to the conscious mind,” He responded.</p>
<p>“So us?” I guessed.</p>
<p>“At least initially, remember how for the 32 days of being able to remember everything, it was impossible to not recall everything? How were we just sitting in our room curtains down trying to shut out everything?” </p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>“So do you remember, when all of sudden memories started appearing less and less after we chugged that energy drink we stole from Dad?”</p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>“In that moment, your sugar infused mind came up with a brilliant idea to split off a piece of the consciousness that would only be focused on controlling the memories. Which is me, though I’m still a part of you,” He responded turning left at an intersection.</p>
<p>“Wait, are you the one who keeps assigning emotional meaning and judgement to my recent memories?” I inquired.</p>
<p>“Yeah, and I’m the one who has been figuring out all the shit you’ve just mindlessly accepted as your own work. Who do you think spent fucking ages fixing our pronunciation and grammar? Who do you think spent a fucking eternity figuring out how to manipulate and understand all the Chakra that your dumbass just dumped into our body? Who do you think was the voice screaming in your ear to not follow your dick and be wary around cute girls who just suddenly ‘appear’! It was me! While you spend all your time just prancing around in the real world, I’m in here slaving away trying to keep your dumbass alive!” He ranted.</p>
<p>“Fine, sorry I didn’t know! You don’t have to be such a dick about it,” I grumbled.</p>
<p>“You're just being a dick to yourself moron!” He chided.</p>
<p>“Huh, yeah I guess so. Anyway truce? What can I do to make things easier on you?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Ugh, fine truce. And if you want to make things easier on me, just do some of the hard mental work yourself instead of just tossing it on me! Maybe, write out a math problem or two instead of just kicking them back for me to finish, maybe actually think about what sounds you’re making to say things instead of just ‘intending’ to say something and make me do the actual translation work. The list goes on and on, but in general just try and actively use your brain more instead of making me do all the work,” He complained.</p>
<p>“Okay, okay I gotcha. So is there any way I can come down here more often? I feel like this is a valuable skill. Maybe, I’m just going insane, but being able to communicate clearly with the part of me that controls the memory hose seems like a good idea,” I asked.</p>
<p>“I haven’t the foggiest, honestly I didn’t even really have a manifestation until that blondie hijacked our head. If I had to guess I’d say try some of that mindfulness bullshit that hippies were always offering as the solution to every problem under the sun. Maybe meditation? Maybe drugs? I don’t know. I’m still just you,” He answered.</p>
<p>“Okay, fair enough so what’s the plan to unhijack our body and not die?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Fear not, for I am an utter genius and I noticed several things that will help us evict this freeloader!” He fluttered his hand dramatically.</p>
<p>“God, I’m a real arrogant prick aren't I?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Oh totally, but that's what makes us great! There it is!” He pointed ahead, to where the tunnel opened into sunlight. Reaching the threshold of the opening I surveyed the land ahead of me.</p>
<p>“It’s a bit roomy,” I commented. Before me lay a picturesque river valley, grasses and trees blanketed the valley, a bit upwards of where we stood, was one end of a massive concrete dam that spanned the whole valley.</p>
<p>“Har de har, it's your brain too moron. And I only had like a couple milliseconds to decorate and design it before you appeared here, give me a month and this place will be phenomenal!” The other me yelled as he started to run up to a staircase that went to the top of the dam. I followed him.</p>
<p>“This doesn't explain shit!” I yelled at him as I pounded up the stairs after him.</p>
<p>“When blondie was hijacking your brain I noticed something, her jutsu only focused on taking control of the areas that relate to voluntary motor functions, and sensory information! It totally avoids any interaction with the memory system, which in any normal wired person would mean no access to memories! However, we are wired differently our memories flow directly into our sensory channels which is why I assume we are able to recall them so accurately! So when she took control of the sensory areas, I noticed an unsteadiness in whatever chakra energy bullshit she used to take control! It seems that the normal flood of memories we normally experience is straining her control of our head! So that got me thinking and allowed me to come up with a plan, that you’ll understand when you get up here!” He had been yelling over his shoulder at me as we ran up the stairs and had just reached the top. </p>
<p>“What the fuck is that?” I asked as I reached the top and saw what was behind the dam. It was a lake, no ocean of the simultaneously clearest and bluest water I had ever seen.</p>
<p>“That is the entirety of your memories. Or at least that's the metaphorical representation of them,” He swept his hands over the nearly endless horizon of memories. “And this,” He stamped his foot on the dam. “Is the metaphorical representation of the system I created to keep the unending memories we have from flooding our mind and conscious sensory experience and driving us insane.” </p>
<p>“Okay, so how does this help us?” I prompted.</p>
<p>“Well as we both know it's easier to destroy something than it is to build something, and since the blonde hijacker is struggling to maintain control over the measly number of memories we normally experience. I’d have to assume if we hit her with the full dosage it will make her weak enough that we can counter hijack our body back. After which, you’ll follow the battle plan I’ll give you, we escape with Sasuke, and then get to the vault. Maybe, we can find something that can beat these guys and heal his shoulder. Got it?” He said opening the door of a small metal shed that stood atop the dam.</p>
<p>“How do I counter hijack our body back?” I asked, having no idea how to do that. He shrugged.</p>
<p>“I don’t know, that's your problem. You’re the one who is in usual control. Think of everything as a metaphor and that might help you figure things out. I know that the command post of the body is downriver here so maybe when we blow the dam you can metaphorically hit her so hard she flies out of our body. Just remember in here, everything is metaphorical.” Inside of the shed, there was a small red box with the words ‘Break to access emergency hammer’ scrawled along the top. Other me picked up the hammer hanging by a chain and broke the glass of the first case, which yielded a bigger hammer which he used to break a bigger emergency glass box. Inside of that box was a cartoonish, red TNT plunger box.</p>
<p>“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I groaned. </p>
<p>“Hey, we liked Looney Tunes as a kid, anyway one last thing is that after I do these things are going to be a bit like the old days, when I didn’t exist. I’ll do my best to ensure that only relevant-ish memories and information appear, at least until I can get things back under control here,” Other me explained.</p>
<p>“How long will that take?” </p>
<p>“Maybe a week to a month? I honestly have no idea. But, as long as you don’t die I will figure things out and repair whatever damage we are going to do right now,” Other me fixed me with a gaze.</p>
<p>“You ready?” He questioned.</p>
<p>“Yeah, let's do this!” I held out a fist and he bumped it, then he depressed the plunger.</p>
<p>A quick succession of quick popping noises assaulted my ears. Other me dropped the plunger and ran outside of the shed, I followed. Underneath our feet the damn began to shake, and groan as deliberate sabotage pushed it past the point of survival. Other Me grabbed two surf boards that were laying against the shed’s wall and set them down, tips overhanging the edge of the collapsing dam.</p>
<p>“Wanna retake our body in style?” He asked wearing a sly grin.</p>
<p>“I knew there was a reason I like you,” I responded. </p>
<p>Underneath us, a flood of water was pouring out of a hole in the dam. Cracks spidered up the walls as jet of water went from being sedan sized to jetliner sized.</p>
<p>“Last one there has to fix this!” I yelled as I jumped onto my surfboard, my momentum carrying it over the edge and down the sharp incline of the dam.</p>
<p>“You sneaky fuck!” Other me yelled as he also started his slide down the dam face.</p>
<p>I rapidly picked up speed as I surfed my way to the jet of water that was shooting out of the dam face. When the surfboard met the jet of water, it bit deep into the flow and I was shot out into the air like a cannonball, though my feet stayed planted to the surfboard.</p>
<p>“Oh shit!” I heard Oher me scream, twisting back I saw that he had also been launched, followed by the dam totally giving way to the flood racing down the valley. The raced ahead of us getting underneath us as we hit the apex of our flight and started falling back to the ground. My trajectory rapidly went downwards, and I nosedived into the torrent of water that was storming down the valley. Luckily, I popped back to the surface like a cork, my feet still planted to the surfboard. A familiar and odd tune reached my ears as I rode the waves of the flood, Wipeout by The Surfaris. My mouth twisted into a grin.</p>
<p>“We are the fucking coolest!” I yelled to Other Me. </p>
<p>“Fuck yeah we are!” He yelled back.</p>
<p>The flood of water tore through the valley, picking up trees, boulders, and chunks of dirt and tossing them with the chaos and fury of an angry toddler. It was like a scene out of a movie, two hero’s surfing a massive wave off the save the day, scored to generic surfing songs.</p>
<p>Ahead, I saw a log cabin standing alone at the bottom of the valley that just seconds away from being washed away by a massive wall of water. The door swung open and inside looking out was the blonde hijacker herself. The shadow of the flood rose over her and the cabin and in the brief moment before her certain inundation, I somehow perfectly heard her say three words.</p>
<p>“What the fuc-” Then nothing. She was lost in the chaos of the flood for a moment. Then, I spotted her being towed along by flow nearly under our surfboards.</p>
<p>“It’s showtime!” I gleefully howled as I took a deep breath and dove into the torrent after her. The currents were cooperative, and they drove me straight towards her flailing form. Her eyes locked onto mine and mine onto her. I winked my right eye. I cocked my right fist and swung. She dodged under it. She threw a left hook at me, it went wide. I tried to jab her with my left fist, but she blocked it. We were barely a foot apart when she drove her right fist into my gut. It hurt, but I powered through to grab both her shoulders. </p>
<p>Time seemed to slow as our eyes met again. I saw fear, panic, and confusion in her eyes. In my eyes she saw triumph, arrogance, and determination. How I knew this fact, I had no idea. But, what I didn’t see in her eyes was a trace of the evil, callousness, and apathy one would need to possess in order to carry out the evil act of human slavery. She seemed to reach a similar conclusion about my character being unable to carry out whatever evil act she had pinned on me. We both came to the same understanding.</p>
<p>‘You aren’t capable of the evil I blamed you for, I’m sorry.’</p>
<p>It was a serene moment in what was supposed to be a fight between life and death. My heart made a single beat and time restarted. I pulled my head back and then swung forward, my forehead slamming into her forehead. </p>
<p>“I win” I gurgled.</p>
<p>A tearing sensation consumed my consciousness as I felt myself retake control of my body and expel the invader. </p>
<p>
  <b></b>
</p>
<p><b>September 24th Midmorning, 2016 RY<br/> </b>
 <b>Kohama<br/> </b>
 <b>Alleyway<br/> </b>
Information, and sensation flooded my perception. It had only been 30 seconds since I had been mentally taken over, in the meantime Ino’s comrades had gotten closer as she had started clenching my head in pain 10 seconds ago. The locations and disposition of everyone around me became clear. Other Me’s battleplan flooded my mind. I had a way to win! </p>
<p>I had once read in a book that if you were outnumbered and outgunned, the only way to gain an advantage was to be willing to resort to total and sudden violence. Shock (in the military sense) is one of the most reliable avenues to triumph and shatter a more powerful foe's willingness and ability to fight. </p>
<p>On the one hand, I now knew that things weren’t what they seemed and both myself and them had made a couple fatal assumptions along the way. However, that didn’t matter because I had the choice to win now, or not win at all. I chose to win.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I funneled all my energy and swung my right arm backwards, my hand clenched into a fist. It contacted the face of the guy named Shika who had come up behind me, and sent him flying.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>My left hand reaches over and takes hold of a heavy clay pot holding a plant. I pitch it on a perfect trajectory toward the dark haired girls face. </p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I flex my right foot and explode towards the glasses guy, my right fist swinging under and up for a furious uppercut.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I bring my right foot forward, plant it, and twist as I torque my whole body’s power into the uppercut, which lands right under the chin of the sunglasses guy.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>The first shouts of alarm are almost finished being vocalized as I reach my left hand down to my right pocket and grasp the handle of a metal trash can.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I follow through with my uppercut, balancing on balls of feet so as to completely twist myself 180 degrees. This twist adds immensely to the power of my left arm which slings the metal trash can over my left shoulder and on a perfect trajectory towards the Asuma guy who is now holding a Ino. </p>
<p>*Ba-dum* </p>
<p>I bend my knees and tense my muscles to explode into motion. My back is to my enemies as I hope I have earned another heartbeat of inaction. </p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I explode out of my stance into a full sprint. I hear the sound of the potted plant impact something soft.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I reach full speed as I try to make my escape.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>A ninja shuriken zooms past my right ear. I don’t flinch. To get to the Inn I will need to make a right turn 3 blocks down the street.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum* </p>
<p>I clear the first intersection.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I make it a quarter the way through the first block.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>A reflection in a window shows me that the Asuma guy has already exploded into motion to chase me. He will reach me in three heart beats.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>A come up with an insane plan, that might just work.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I plant my feet and twist 180 degrees to face Asuma. My eyes meet his and I see cold calculation, experienced observation, and determination. I meet the challenge with passion and hunger.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum* </p>
<p>I do a classic stutter step, pumping my arms in motion with my legs, creating the illusion that I might try and bolt past him. This draws his eyes away from the important detail. My hips, which stay dead on his vector of movement.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum* </p>
<p>His lapse in focus allows me to plant my feet, brace my body, and square up my arms in preparation to lay out a hit on him that would make Steve Atwater wince. His eyes began to as he understood his folly, but it was too late.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>He and I collide at tremendous speed. He has a couple of inches on me, but I am definitely his match or better in weight. He was overextended and off balance. I was compact, braced, and ready for contact. He may have been a skilled ninja, but that didn’t mean he could shrug off a technique perfect hit from someone with leverage and a weight advantage. The kinetic energy he had driven into me was being used to compress my muscles too.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>Having absorbed the energy of Asuma’s collision I gave it right back to him. Exploding forward with my feet, legs, and body, I directed my force right below his center of gravity. When the force of my hit combined with him being off balance and stunned, I was able to fully lay the wood on him. Asuma went flying backwards from me, eyes swimming in confusion and pain. His comrades who had just gotten themselves organized being in the flight path of Asuma the bowling ball.</p>
<p>*Ba-dum*</p>
<p>I rotate on my heels again and take off. Other Me’s plan has worked to perfection and I have for a little moment given myself breathing space and time. I pick up speed and rapidly make it to the intersection that leads to the Inn. I execute a decent cut and manage to not lose much speed in the 90 degree right turn. As I’m turning I’m able to glance over my shoulder, and assess the pursuit given my Ino’s comrades. To my slight dismay, they all are back on their feet and are in hot pursuit of me, but the distance I have earned so far is allowing me to pull away.</p>
<p>The Inn is about 6 blocks down the road from the intersection, and I have already traveled 4 of them, when another shuriken goes whizzing by my head. I turn my head to look back at pursuers and I have enough time to register the kunai rapidly flying towards my face. I duck as it zooms by overhead. My pursuers are 2 blocks behind me. Well within shouting range.</p>
<p>“You’re going to put out someone’s eye with those fucking toothpicks you kindergarteners keep throwing around!” I holler back at them.</p>
<p>“Your right and it's going to be hilarious when I poke out of yours!” Ino who had somehow joined the hunting pack hollered back.</p>
<p>“You say that now, but when you're up to your elbows in legal fees and subpoena requests from how hard I drag you through the court system you’ll wish harder for your own death than mine!” I sniped back.<br/>
“Fuck you!” She screeched back.</p>
<p>“Only in your dreams, sistah!” I taunted. But before she could throw out another insult, while her comrades looked increasingly more and more embarrassed by the whole affair. A loud boom erupted from in front of me, forcing me to swivel my head back to figure out what new fucking crisis was going to show up and take dump on my front porch.</p>
<p>I took in the scene before me, with surprising detached calmness. Sasuke was sprawled out in the road, debris was scattered everywhere and was still raining down. The bags containing all of our money and the books were also scattered on the ground. The walls where our room had been were just gone, along with a good portion of the entire front facing wall of the Inn. Finally, to top it all off a guy was standing on the second his neck extending like a giraffe, withs fangs glinting in the sunlight as he shot towards Sasuke’s left shoulder.</p>
<p>I determined that I would be unideal if the giraffe man sank his fangs into Sasuke’s shoulder. A memory surfaced of there being a perfectly hand sized stone to the right of my foot, digging my sandals under the rock, I flipped it into the air perfectly. This allowed me to snatch the stone with my right hand as I set my footing and reminded myself and the world why I was the best closing pitcher in our entire high school. I knew this not because anyone told me, but because the coach nearly had aneurysm when I switched my main sport to football. I gauged where the giraffe man’s head would be when the rock would arrive to ring his bell. Thankfully, my overcharged brain was up to the task and spit out an answer that I could work with, it would be close. But, where's the fun in having no chance for failure in life.</p>
<p>I wound up, raised my knee, said a little prayer to lady luck, and then I exploded forward. I drove my foot into the dirt, rotated my body and hips to maximize power as my chakra enhanced arm sent the rock flying fast and true. The masonic projective intercepted the head of the giraffe man roughly 3 feet away from the sprawled form of my comrade. His bell rung and his aim spoiled the giraffe man’s head did not bite down on the shoulder of my comrade, but instead became an innovative way to remodel homes, but punching holes in the wall.</p>
<p>Apparently, my pursuers also didn’t expect the giraffe man's appearance; the sound of their footfalls came to a screeching halt. This gave the excellent opportunity to get ahead, and snatch up both my bag and comrade in a single stylish slide. Which I executed to perfection, managing to grasp and sling both my bag and the torso of my stunned buddy Sasuke over my shoulders. Kicking backwards as I was able to convert my remaining sliding momentum into a quick stand up. </p>
<p>“Who dares interfere with the business of Orochimaru of the Sanin?” A new and altogether unpleasant voice screeched behind me at eardrum bursting volume. </p>
<p>Now any other time that voice and fury probably would have sent me into ‘suck my thumb and wish for mama to make the bad monster get out from under my bed mode.’ However, I was so hopped on adrenaline, the thrill of outfoxing my opponents(read: delusions of victory), the energy of an evolving and challenging competitive environment(read: delusions about situation), and an absolute love for the values of true sportsmanship(read: delusions about the result of failure). I was having an absolute blast, and as such I turned to face my new opponent and size them up as I hefted my cargo. </p>
<p>I was met with a face that leaked pure malice, hatred, and many other scary things that should have terrified me, instead I gave voice to my true impressions of the appearance of Orochimaru of Sanin.</p>
<p>“I do not want to know what thing your mom banged for you to come out looking like that! God your ugly!” It was stated as absolute fact for in my mental state it was absolute fact at least in whatever small corner of rational thought still existed in my messed up brain.</p>
<p>Luckily, my harsh words played a decisive part in keeping me from getting run through with a sword that had extended out of the mouth of Orochimaru of Sanin, for my cutting insult had cause him to choke with fury and that spoiled his aim, once more as he drove the sword right between my feet.</p>
<p>“Okay time to go,” I squeaked my voice climbing as many octaves as there were kids of the octomom. I turned on my heels and sped off. Several loud booms behind me letting me know that my two groups of pursues were fighting each other and not going after me. A groan from the living passenger on right shoulder let me know he was still conscious.</p>
<p>“So can you explain to me what the hell is going on?” I asked, as I ran full tilt towards the river canyon.</p>
<p>Before he was able to answer simultaneous shrieks of “Sasuke!” from both Ino and Orochimaru were directed at us as I made good our escape.</p>
<p>“You know what I don’t wanna know at least until we are safe, whatever you tell me will just confuse me more.” I said jokingly.</p>
<p>“They are gaining on us,” He said matter of factly.</p>
<p>“As in a minute or 30 seconds?” I cheerfully asked.</p>
<p>“Ten seconds,” He informed me.</p>
<p>“Well shit, we need roughly 45 seconds,” I complained.</p>
<p>“Hold on,” I felt him rapidly move his hand and pulse his chakra. A great amount of light and heat appeared behind me, followed 5 seconds later by a resounding boom.</p>
<p>“25 seconds now,” He stated flatly.<br/>
“What did you do? Wait, never mind I don't wanna know, tell me later,” I panted as I poured my energy into my legs.</p>
<p>“You could put me down,” He offered.</p>
<p>“No, it would take too much time and frankly I don’t have to explain the vague outline of a getaway plan I have,” I declined.</p>
<p>“Vague outline?”</p>
<p>“More like I imagined what the vague outline is and I’m waiting for inspiration when we get there,” I elaborate. He just groaned in response. </p>
<p>To be honest I was exaggerating a bit, how little of a plan I knew. During my run with Ino I had spied things that looked remarkably like paddle boards leaning against a wooden shed. That shed being located right near the wooden staircase that locals took to get down to the river, for the river that ran through Kohama had cut deep into the ground and was in a canyon that was nearly 60 feet deeper than the Kohama street level. So I figured I could “borrow” one of the paddle boards and get us down river as fast as possible. In fact, there was a rather imposing waterfall a mile down river than was a natural barrier to anyone who was sane. I was not included in such categories and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to lose any pursuers. How we would actually survive a fall down a 300 foot waterfall I hadn’t the foggiest, but it wasn’t like I was going to tell Sasuke that little ‘detail’.</p>
<p>“They are gaining on us,” I felt Sasuke do more hand movements and pulse his chakra once more. Another flash of light and heat cooked my back before going a loud boom echoed through the streets six seconds later.</p>
<p>“Never mind, that got us 30 seconds. Both Orochimaru and the leaf ninja are having to prioritize their focus between fighting and trying to pursue us, we should be fine assuming you actually have a plan,” He grumbled.</p>
<p>“Leaf ninja? Oh so that's what they were, I thought they were slave catchers,” I wheezed in between labored breaths.</p>
<p>“What is a slave catcher?” He asked.</p>
<p>“A very bad person that you don’t seemingly have to worry about, considering I’ve been assuming a lot recently,” I chirped back, “Anyway are you good?”</p>
<p>“Am I good?” He snorted, his voice dripping with sarcasm.</p>
<p>“You know what I mean, no bruises? No cuts? Has little Suzie stopped putting dirt in your lunchbox when you're not looking? Maybe she doesn't hate, but she just has a crush on you.” I shot back with equally venomous sarcasm. That earned a full laugh out of him.</p>
<p>“If by dirty you mean shrunken, and by lunchbox you mean your head then no she hasn’t. That's me telling you to duck your head by the way.” I snapped my head down and a pair of shuriken zoomed through the place my head was a second ago.</p>
<p>“God, you guys really have full on stormtrooper aim with those things,” I quipped.</p>
<p>“Stormtrooper aim?” He questioned.</p>
<p>“Another reference from where I come from, don’t worry about it,” I sighed as we crossed the last block before we ran up against the edge of the canyon. I made a swift cut to my right and I was able to maintain my speed as I zoomed down the pathway towards the shed. To my great relief, the paddle boards and paddles were there. </p>
<p>“Okay, the vague outline of a plan has now just become a fingerpainted representation of a plan,” I said triumphantly. </p>
<p>“Well that's good, because they are right behind us, and I’d rather not die or be captured today if I can help it,” Sasuke sarcastically requested.</p>
<p>“Wow me too! We have so much in common, wanna be pen pals?” </p>
<p>“Pen pals?” </p>
<p>I sighed. “My wit is wasted upon those who cannot appreciate its genius,” I bemoaned.</p>
<p>“Rightttt,” he drawled in response.</p>
<p>“You're a lot more talkative now than you usually are,” I observed.</p>
<p>“Running away with the chance of combat and death tends to do that to me,” He sniped.</p>
<p>“Duly noted, anyway things are about to get a little hectic so hold on tight,” I advised. Up ahead, were the three items I needed to make my great escape, a wooden paddle board, a long double bladder paddle, and a straight set of stairs that lead directly to a straight dock, straight into the river. </p>
<p>As we ran by the shed I pilfered both the board and paddle with the hand and crook of my arm respectively. This allowed me to do a running and jump start on the board by tossing it out in front of me, right on the lip of the first set of stairs going down. I planted both my feet on the board, jerked my arm back so I could grab the paddle out from the crook of my arm, and I prayed once more to lady luck to give me a set of double sixes. </p>
<p>Which surprisingly she did give me, considering we managed to somehow slide down the length of the staircase actually on the paddleboard. </p>
<p>“Johnny Knoxville eat your goddamn heart out!” I howled as we hit the bottom and skimmed right over the dock and into the river, just as planned. Spray blanketed me as we skimmed across the water.</p>
<p>“Brace yourself, I need both arms to paddle,” I said to my passenger before spilling him unceremoniously onto the board.</p>
<p>“Moron,” he grumbled. </p>
<p>“I know you are, but what am I?” I mocked. The paddle bite deep into the water as I put my many summers in Minnesota lake country to good use. My arms already ached, and my chest hurt from running so much, but what other choice did I have other than to keep going. So I paddled.</p>
<p>“Are you a five year old?” </p>
<p>“Not for at least 9 years if I still remember how to count,” I reposted. Sasuke just groaned.</p>
<p>“Are we losing them?” I inquired.</p>
<p>“Yes? Oh no there they are, yeah they are just running along the riverbank. Remind me why are we taking a boat which is slower than what either of us can run?” He accused me.</p>
<p>“You’ll see, I have a plan and it will only work if we have something that can float,” I soothed.</p>
<p>“If you say so, incoming,” The clang of steel on steel contact rings out from behind me, until I feel a stabbing sensation in my thigh.</p>
<p>“Ow!” I yelp. </p>
<p>“Missed one,” Sasuke says as a way of apology.</p>
<p>“Gee ya think?” I snark back. I look over my shoulder. Orochimaru is on the left hand bank and the leaf ninja is on the right hand bank. I can’t figure who threw it so I just raise my voice so everyone can hear.</p>
<p>“When I find out who threw that stupid shuriken, I’m going to sue them up the goddamned wazooo!” I howled in anger and pain. No one responded to my jeers. I kept paddling, as if my life depended on it.</p>
<p>My efforts were richly rewarded as soon the roar of water became audible up ahead. If we could just make it over, and not die in the process, we might be able to make a clean getaway. </p>
<p>“Keep them off our back a little longer, then we might be home free!” I yelled back to Sasuke.</p>
<p>“Are we heading towards rapids!?” He shouted back.</p>
<p>“No, a waterfall!” I answered.</p>
<p>“A waterfall!?” He shouted in worry. I could see the edge of the falls clearly now, only 40 feet of separation between us and a long fall.</p>
<p>“Yeah! Keep your feet planted at all costs!” I ordered, as I sped up my paddling to an unsustainable speed. I wanted us to gain as much horizontal distance, so we could get clear of whatever lay at the bottom of the falls.</p>
<p>“Are you insane!?” He accused me.</p>
<p>“Who dares wins!” I shouted, being glad no one could call me out on my grievous plagiarism. I put all my energy into a single last stroke, as we shot over the edge. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, I had not come up with a better plan than fall and try to not die. I glued my feet to board, using the tree walking technique taught to me by Old Salt. This allowed me to swing my body forward and backward to shift the balance of the paddleboard as it sailed through the air. The best I could mentally figure it if we kept the board at a roughly 15-30 degree angle of attack, we could use the wide surface area of the board to both keep us from hitting terminal velocity, and have it absorb the majority of impact force with the water. If we were both lucky, then our chakra enhanced bodies might be able to absorb and dissipate the force of the landing without breaking anything, at least in theory.</p>
<p>The view was exhilarating. I found us yelling in a mix of joy and terror, as our ballistic trajectory pulled us ever downwards. To my panic, the paddle board began to tilt forward, out of the 15-30 degree sweet spot.</p>
<p>“Lean back!” I howled as I threw my weight backwards. This had the desired effect as the angle of attack improved back to the sweet spot. The ground reached up to meet us as we descended ever faster. </p>
<p>“BRACE!” I shouted as I bent my knees and tried to replicate the feeling of total relaxation I had once had on a beach in Florida. It was difficult, but I had read that being utterly relaxed was the best state to be in when in a car crash. This was just like a car crash, but off a cliff into a river while being chased by people who wanted to kill me, so totally like a car crash.</p>
<p>When the back of the board sliced into the water first it caused a levering motion which slammed the rest of the board downwards into the water. It turned the straight fall into more of a slapping motion, which was a good thing because it increased the time we had to decelerate from our fall. This prevented the total force being exerted on our bodies from ever rising above the critical threshold where you break bones, rupture organs, and generally just die.</p>
<p>I crumpled on impact, as my bent legs and relaxed muscles allowed for my body to disperse the force more evenly and slowly. My breath was forced from my chest as I collided with the thick wood of the board. I saw stars as my head whipped back and slammed into the wood. Lightning shot through my body as every single neuron screamed in protest at the abuse they were being put through, but the worst of the pain was short lived.  </p>
<p>I let out a wheezing cough and groaned as the rest of my body caught up to the fact that I had just fallen 300 feet and that I had not died. Nothing felt broken or torn, but strained and aching probably described 80% of the tissue inside me. The sounds of coughing brought me back to the fact that I was not alone.</p>
<p>“You alive?” I said groggily. A grunted acknowledgement was the only response I heard.</p>
<p>“Good stuff, let's say we just relax for a bit then we get up and continue trying not to die or get kidnapped?” Another grunt of acknowledgement confirmed Sasuke’s agreement to the plan. So we lay there for a bit, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the water was nice and cool. It was a beautiful day to not be dead. </p>
<p>The quiet moment of revery was broken by a distant voice.</p>
<p>“There alive!” I heard a male voice yell.</p>
<p>“Oh shit, we better get going,” I said dragging myself back to my feet.</p>
<p>“They won’t be able to get down here right?” I asked looking up at the cliff to five figures looking downwards at us.</p>
<p>“Not quickly at least, I bet this gives us at least an hour of breathing space,” Sasuke commented. </p>
<p>“Well then let's not waste it. If we follow this river for a couple miles, spotting the valley that the vault is in should be easy.” </p>
<p>Pulling my gaze away from the cliff face I eyed the riverbank. During the fall I had lost my paddle, and it was out of easy jumping reach. In theory, I had learned how to water walk from Old Salt. In practice, I had never done it anywhere besides still bodies of water. I eyed the running water with suspicion</p>
<p>Sasuke being the jackass that he was just stood up, and started water-walking over to the shore. I sucked in a deep breath, recalled the sensation of balancing out the chakra flow in my feet, and confidently put my right foot into water. The water gave way and I fell right in.</p>
<p>I came up sputtering, and cursing. To my chagrin I saw Sasuke looking at me, a small grin creasing his lips. </p>
<p>“Oh laugh it up why don’t you,” I barked as I started to paddle my way over to the shore. Sasuke took my suggestion and started to laugh. I grumbled as I struggled my way onto dry land. Sasuke came over to me as a small smile was still etched onto his face, that's when I noticed something was different about him. </p>
<p>“Hey, is it just me or are your eyes like red now?” The smile on Sasuke's face faded away going back to the usual more neutral expression he wore.  His gaze bore into my eyes, seemingly searching for something in my eyes that would inform him of if I was being genuine in my curiosity. He seemed to find something because the tenseness in his body relaxed a bit and he sighed.</p>
<p>“The redness you see is the Sharingan, a unique trait held only by the members of the Uchiha clan.”</p>
<p>“Oh, that's cool I guess. Does it let you see through walls or something?” I asked.</p>
<p>“No, it’s abilities are varied and powerful; the most important being is the extreme clarity of vision and the ability to copy techniques it sees. Seeing through walls is something that the Byakugan can do, but the Sharingan is much more flexible and powerful,” Sasuke said, shaking his head.</p>
<p>“Wait there's more of these unique eye thingies?” Sasuke simply nodded in response.</p>
<p>“Huh, neato. Let’s run and talk, I think I have some misconceptions to clear up,” I nodded my head towards the forest. Sasuke nodded in agreement, and we quickly took off through the trees towards the valley where the vault was supposedly located.</p>
<p>We talked during our trip and several things became clear. Sasuke was most definitely not a runaway slave, but rather a runaway ninja. The Orochimaru guy was the person he had been trying to run to before I had accidentally collided with him and broke the curse seal. It seems that it had been having a large influence on his personality and decision making. So now with the seal blown up, and me having done the apparent impossible according to both sides. Conveniently, I had also provided a way to both fix him and help him achieve a goal, that being apparently advanced healing technology and a superweapon.<br/>
In turn I shared my secrets and goals, them being my perfect memory and wanting to get home. It was interesting, realizing that we both had overlapping abilities in regard to visual memory and that we also had overlapping goals. In short, we had both realized that a partnership was both mutually beneficial and the only option both of us had. He was highly trained in the ways of combat, and I was the only one who could decipher and understand what had been left behind by the initial visitors from earth. I still didn’t know the reason why he needed a superweapon, but he didn’t seem like the evil bastard type, so I let it slide. </p>
<p>The fact that I wasn’t even a fully trained ninja but rather just some amateur who had a good memory, some chakra, and some basic instruction seemed to surprise Sasuke.</p>
<p>“I thought you were lying to me about your background, you seemed too confident and competent to be just some guy who appeared out of nowhere. The fact that you not only broke free from Yamanaka’s mind possession jutsu, out ran an entire pursuit squad with a jonin, and then managed to scrape by one of the deadliest people on the planet with barely a scratch, made it very hard for me to believe you to be just some random guy. But, from what you’ve told me and from what I’ve seen I’m actually starting to believe it's all true.” Sasuke commented.</p>
<p>“Thanks, I guess. Honestly, I have no idea how I’m not dead considering what you’ve told me about your former comrades’ abilities and skills,” I replied. </p>
<p>“If you could teach me more about your language and writing system and I could teach you more about how to properly fight like a ninja, we could both accomplish our goals,” Sasuke mused.</p>
<p>“Doesn’t seem like a very fair trade on your end of things, I’d just have to teach you to speak and read, but you’d have to go through and teach me all the intricacies of combat. I’m not complaining, it just seems like you give up more than I do,” I said.</p>
<p>“No, if what that book said was true. Helping me gain access to it secrets and the secrets of whatever was left behind will be infinitely more valuable to helping me rebuild the Uchiha. Me teaching you how to fight and stay alive is also helpful to me. Even if I can read and understand your language, putting what I read into the proper context remains almost impossible. If you hadn’t been able to explain the hidden meanings and idioms in the first book, I would have never found the location of the vault even if I had been able to read it in the first place,” Sasuke elaborated.</p>
<p>“Makes sense to me, hey why have you become so talkative recently? I’m not saying it's a bad thing, it just seems like beforehand you were more of a quiet person,” I asked, the candor and frankness in our talk giving me the confidence to ask the question. Sasuke hesitated for a moment before answering.</p>
<p>“I’ve had my entire worldview shaken up three times in as many weeks. You’re the first one who hasn’t wanted something from me or had some hidden game underpinning why you bothered to help me in the first place. For the past 13 years of my life I’ve always been a pawn in someone else's game, and now you’ve presented me with the option to take control of my life for the first time, with no expectation of me providing anything in return. It’s a refreshing break from the usual tedium and idiocy I have had to put up with my whole life. So I guessed I might as well try a new way of working with people,” Sasuke finished with a shrug.</p>
<p>“Fair enough, I’ve been a bit aimless in how I’ve been dealing with things, so having a pal who knows what's what here is going to make getting home and not dying significantly easier. You also seem like a smart and driven dude, and considering you’re the one person who hasn’t tried to coerce or kill me. I figure it's the natural option for us to team up,” I said, pulling up next to Sasuke. I held out my fist, he looked at it, and he bumped it with his own fist, formalizing our alliance.</p>
<p>We made quick time as we zoomed through the trees, reaching the lonely valley within three hours of our plunge over the waterfall. The lonely valley that was said to contain the vault, was home to a tributary river that fed into the main river we had ridden right off the waterfall. I had feared that finding the entrance puzzle would have been a difficult and time consuming affair, but was surprised when it was hidden in plain sight. </p>
<p>On a solid stone wall that formed the one edge of the valley wall was English letters indented into the face. They were squiggly, a bit out of proportion, and faint to see, but if you knew what you were looking for they stood out like Christmas lights. I read them out loud.</p>
<p>“Draw the flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain on the face below, using the provided water.” Underneath these words a small stream of water gurgled out of a hole in the rockface, right next to an unusually flat piece of stonewall.</p>
<p>“What's the United Kingdom of Great Britain?” Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>“It's a country from my world,” I answered.</p>
<p>“Do you know what it’s flag looks like?”</p>
<p>“Yep, it's easy to draw,” I said as I stepped forward and dunked my finger into the stream. I traced the Union Jack onto the rock wall, the water darkening the stone. When I completed the last line of the cross, the whole outline started to glow with blue energy. A circular plug of rock popped out and swung aside as a Johnson bar lever extended out of the hole, it had a white arrow pointing downwards. I squeezed the handle to release the latch and pulled the lever downwards. A loud clunk came from behind the wall, as some piece of machinery was engaged. The Johnson bar pulled back into the wall out of my hand and the rock plug resettled itself, into the wall.</p>
<p>A hiss then kerchunk came from behind the rock face, all of a sudden the wall had split into two doors that were slowly swinging outwards. This revealed a small iron and rock room, illuminated by hanging light bulbs. </p>
<p>“Huh, I guess we found it,” I joked. Sasuke snorted in agreement.</p>
<p>“Let’s get inside, and see if we can close these doors behind us. Hopefully, that can allow us free reign to figure out what's in here at our leisure.” Sasuke nodded in agreement.</p>
<p>Slowly we both crept out way into the entrance room, it was bare aside from a long hallway that led deeper into the complex. A lever set between the words open and close, was nestled into the wall. I walked up, shifted it close, and the disguised wall doors swung back into position. This left us alone inside, with only the illuminating of the lightbulbs. </p>
<p>“Let’s search this place, and figure out what we have here,” I muttered.</p>
<p>“Yeah, we should stay together though, we don’t know if any traps are planted,” Sasuke said.</p>
<p>“Good idea.”</p>
<p>Over the next two hours we thoroughly examined every aspect of the small complex. We appeared to be in a front section, which was sealed off from the rest by a large metal door, we didn’t see any clear way to open it so we ignored it and focused our efforts on the four room’s we could search. These included an armory, library, device storage, and a medical lab.</p>
<p>We took careful notes of all the objects, books, and weapons we saw. We didn’t take anything; we would have time for that later. For now we just spent our time ensuring there were no traps or items that would pose an immediate danger to us.</p>
<p>We entered the medical lab and found it chocked full of both recognizable and unrecognizable items. It looked like a modern outfitted hospital room with beds, cabinets, and other machines, whose purposes I could only guess at.</p>
<p>However, one item drew my gaze, it was a large tube cut into the wall, with buttons, knobs, and other control pieces that I could barely understand, I read out the label above it.</p>
<p>“Matter-Information Regenerator… Sounds interesting,” I mused as I walked over and examined it closely. Besides it was a book titled, ‘Usage of the Matter-Information Regenerator’ I flipped it open and began to read it out loud.</p>
<p>It rapidly became apparent that this would be the exact item we needed. As I understood it this Matter-Information Regenerator was able to scan a body or item, and by using a combination of physics, chakra, and some kind of sealing jutsu would be able to figure out the exact composition of the item down to the atomic level, along with the entire movement history of all the atoms scanned. It would then be able to reconstruct a new copy or repair damage at the atomic level. So in theory it could scan a person with a failing liver, figure out what the position of all the atoms in the liver were when it was healthy and then replace and repair the liver at the atomic level to a previous state when it was healthy. So not only could it heal a person, but it also had the ability to make a near perfect clone of them at any point in their life. </p>
<p>During my reading Sasuke would stop me to ask pertinent questions about the words, concepts, and overall meaning of some of the dense jargon laced explanations of the machine. When I was done, he asked me one final question.</p>
<p>“Do you think it will work?” </p>
<p>“Maybe? Who knows?” I answered. He seemed to hesitate for a second before nodding to himself.</p>
<p>“Let's do it,” he said with a notion of finality as he stepped into the tube. </p>
<p>I stepped up to the control panel. Looking down at the panel, I located the green ‘Initiate Scan” button. I hovered my hand over it, and looked up to Sasuke. The question was evident in my gaze because he nodded.</p>
<p>“Do it.”</p>
<p>I hit the button. The rim of the tube flared to life in a low green glow. A tinny voice spoke out.</p>
<p>“Initializing Scan. Please wait.” A glowing green disc filled the bottom of the tube, and began moving upwards. It flowed around the clothes and body of Sasuke, moving upwards at a sedate pace. It was like a paper scanner back home. When it reached the top of the tube after sliding up the entirety of Sasuke’s form, the voice spoke.</p>
<p>“Scan Complete. Major damage detected, highlighting.” A transparent green sphere formed around the area of the dead splotch of tissue.</p>
<p>“Would you like to repair?” The voice spoke. I hit the yellow repair button. The voice spoke in response.</p>
<p>“Repair selected, please indicate the required time to use as the repair template. Provide time as the number of days previous you want to use as the template.” The voice spoke out. We already knew this was a required input, so Sasuke had told me a number of days that should be before he was branded with the curse seal. I said the number anyway and he confirmed it, I spun a dial on the control panel that counted up, to the required number. I hit the yellow repair button again. The voice spoke.</p>
<p>“Number of days to roll back selected, please check and confirm this is the correct number.” I looked down at the dial, and hit a blue confirmation button.</p>
<p>“Rollback date confirmed, beginning matter repairs now. Please do not leave the capsule, and minimize movement during the repair operation.” The voice commanded before the green sphere turned opaque. Sasuke winced, but didn’t move. The green sphere began to glow with ever increasing intensity. It was mesmerizing. For 30 seconds the sphere glowed with an intensity that stung the eyes, but by the end of the half minute the glow began to fade out and the sphere became transparent. The voice spoke.</p>
<p>“Repairs complete, subject information has been stored if a full back up or cloning operation is required. Have a nice day!” It chirped happily.</p>
<p>I looked at Sasuke, who looked at me then glazed down at his shoulder. He pulled the side of his shirt to expose the shoulder, the blotch of dead tissue was gone. In its place, was fully healthy and pale tissue.</p>
<p>“Huh, it actually worked,” I said in amazement. Behind me a low noise reached my ears a slight hissing sound. I whirled, and my eyes began to scan the room. But, before I could locate the source a new sound assaulted my ears from the door frame into the lab, a voice.</p>
<p>“It seems someone has finally taken the bait, and has wandered into my little abode. I don’t take kindly to snakes or intruders.” The voice was in a language I hadn’t heard anyone, but myself speak in a long time, in an accent I had only rarely heard. It was English, it was English that was spoken in a British accent. I whirled on the new voice and my eyes widened in shock. It was a man. He wore bright golden armor and focused his murderous gaze right at me, his unnaturally light blue eyes piercing into my very soul. He spoke.</p>
<p>“Unfortunately, for you I don’t foresee you leaving this place alive.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Post Chapter Author's Note: God what a chapter to write. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, which is when the story really begins to kick into gear. Honestly, I didn’t intend for the internal mindscape scene of Roger’s to take so long, but I did really enjoy writing it. Nor did I intended for the Ino social trapping scene to go on so long, but it was a really fun dynamic to write so it’s kind of just dragged on. I might feature her more; she seems like an interesting character to write and interact with. Please if you can tell me what you think about how I’m molding Roger’s character to be something other than “haha I am an oc from da real world haha”, It’s a goal of mine to make him one of the good ones. Similarly, I hope that my characterization of Sasuke was similarly pleasing and entertaining. I feel like he’s a character that has great potential to still be dynamic and active while also not being on his own side story that is irrelevant to the main progression of the plot from Roger’s point of view. I hope to also have some more interactions between Sasuke, Roger, and Asuma’s retrieval team.</p>
<p>Also I intend to start writing little side stories either as add-ons to chapter or as standalones. The single limited perspective that Roger has makes it extremely difficult to really inform what's going on in the rest of the world. I mean the ripple effects of it being known that Sasuke is actually out of the control of Orochimaru and is running around with some rando, doing god knows what and somehow triggering ancient buried artifacts to start fucking up the world. I intend for it to be a catalyst for some of the rookie 11 to change their actions and mindsets going forward during the “time-skip” era. Which by the way I do intend to go through, so no this won't be a case where we warp forward 3 years to the beginning of the Shippuden era. I fully intend to have Roger and Sasuke be active during the time skip era, in their own adventure growing, learning, and overcoming the challenges I place in their way. I hope to make it so that during the dead air that is usually wasted between the end of part 1 and part 2, is actually the prelude to a part 2 that is jam packed full of events. Anyway, thank you so much for reading this long disaster of a chapter. Every review helps me immensely, so if you wish please do leave them. Also I’m sure there are going to be a bunch of stupid mistakes I won’t catch before I post this, so feel free to point them out and mock me for them so I fix them. Thank you and have a nice time.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 5: Lighting the Match</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Got this chapter out quicker than I expected. I expect to be doing a bunch of shadow edits however, so if you see a small error or stupid mistake feel free to call my dumbass on it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>-------------------------------------------<br/>
</p>
<p>
  <b>September 24th Afternoon, 2016 RY</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Hidden Valley Vault</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Medical Lab</b>
</p>
<p>"Identify yourselves! Who dares cross Albert!" Shouted the towering man in golden armor. He was broad shouldered, clad head to toe in a suit of radiating gold plate armor, that was studded with a massive gem in the center of his chest.</p>
<p>"Do you dare try to steal my book of truths? The book that I detailed in that silly cookbook?!" He yelled with even more ferocity. His eyes darted between Sasuke and me.</p>
<p>"What's he saying?" Sasuke asked. This was apparently the wrong thing to say, because Albert's face twisted into a sneer.</p>
<p>"Oh, you're just some local gutter trash that lucked their way in. Big mistake," He sneered before raising one of his palms. A bright glow began to emit from the palm as he aimed his palm at Sasuke.</p>
<p>That's when out of nowhere Orochimaru sprung at him, snarling. There was a collision and a small explosion of light and sound. I had to shield my eyes from the dust that was kicked up.</p>
<p>I was stunned. Orochimaru, jumping Albert was not something I had foreseen. The pair had already blown down the wall and were off somewhere in the complex. I looked at Sasuke.</p>
<p>His eyes were wide, but I didn't see any of the fear or shock I expected from someone who almost got their head blown off.</p>
<p>"Well, this just became a bit complicated," I said.</p>
<p>"So do we run or go after them?" Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>"Go after them?!"</p>
<p>"We need that book; everything depends on it!" Sasuke growled.</p>
<p>"What everything!?" I hissed back.</p>
<p>"The weapons, what else would I be talking about?"</p>
<p>"Fuck, I don't know. How do you propose we swipe it?"</p>
<p>"Go back to the armory, load up on those weapons. Win." Sasuke stated with finality.</p>
<p>"That isn't much of a goddamn framework to go on. Hell I barely even know if I can operate those guns, I've only ever shot my uncles .22 varmint gun. Which is a far cry from a full machine gun." I snipped back.</p>
<p>"You can figure it out. You haven't acted like a moron yet." Sasuke said.</p>
<p>"Yet…" I said, before sighing and taking a shaky breath.</p>
<p>"Okay, if the weapons in their work. We might have a chance, assuming I can figure them out." I relented.</p>
<p>"Good, let's go." Sasuke whispered before standing up and running for the doorway.</p>
<p>"Fucking nutjob," I cursed as I followed.</p>
<p>The main hallway was already clear, the battle having progressed deeper into the complex. We returned to the armory without incident.</p>
<p>Inside, we raided all the weapons we could reasonably carry and use. Fortunately, I had once binged a series on World War One guns on the internet, so I was actually able to identify and operate (at least in theory) most of the guns we found.</p>
<p>In summary, I was able to equip myself with a Lewis automatic machine gun, two Colt 1911 handguns both tucked into my pockets, and a bandolier of hand grenades. There were rifles that were tempting, but I figured that having to work a bolt for every shot would be a near death sentence. The automatic fire of the machine gun, and semi-automatic fire of the pistols would prevent me from too defenseless between shots.</p>
<p>Sasuke was leery about taking the metal contraptions into battle, having hoped for more contemporary weaponry. Though, he was happy to also carry a bandolier of grenades once I explained their usage and effects.</p>
<p>"So these things fling little lead slugs really fast? How is that any different from a kunai or shuriken?" Sasuke inquired as I stuffed away extra ammo clips and drums on my person. I thought about the question for a second before answering.</p>
<p>"Do you know the formula behind kinetic energy?"</p>
<p>"Kinetic energy is the energy in moving objects right?" Sasuke answered hesitantly.</p>
<p>"Yeah, so your kunai weighs something like 300 grams right? And let's say you can get it up to 150km/h. So it's gonna hurt if it hits something. However, kinetic energy is equal to half the mass of the object multiplied by its speed squared. So if instead you're able to throw a kunai that weighs 150 grams at 300 km/s, that will hit with double the force. So if instead if I hit you with this," I held up a loose rifle bullet. It may only weigh 10 grams, but it's lobbed at 3000 km/s it will have a hell of a lot more energy to hit and kill you with, you see what I mean?" Sasuke's eyes began to widen as he mentally crunched the numbers..</p>
<p>"That could really do some damage."</p>
<p>"Damn straight, now let's go find ourselves a book," I said, hefting the Lewis Gun.</p>
<p>"Do you have a plan?" I asked as we left the armory and proceeded down the main corridor. Our newly acquired gear rattling as we walked.</p>
<p>"We try to prevent either of them from winning too easily, and hope whoever wins will be too worn down to beat us," Sasuke said.</p>
<p>"Got it, what if they focus on killing us first?"</p>
<p>"We die. So let's hope that doesn't happen," Sasuke said.</p>
<p>"Cheery, well that's a comforting plan." I griped. Sasuke only shrugged in response.</p>
<p>The sounds of battle reached our ears as booms, yells, and clangs. We picked up speed as the sounds intensified.</p>
<p>In front of us the hallway opened up into a massive throne room. Grey stone columns lined the edge of a long white marble pathway that led up to a golden royal throne. Hanging oil lamps provided a flickering illumination of the room.</p>
<p>Inside two figures were engaged in a hand to hand struggle, though dust obfuscated who was who in the melee.</p>
<p>"Who's winning?" I whispered to him.</p>
<p>"Doesn't matter," He whispered back as he plucked one of the grenades from his bandolier. He looped one of his fingers around the pin ring and looked at me. I nodded and made a pulling motion. He pulled the pin out, cocked his arm back and threw.</p>
<p>The handle sprang free as the metal pineapple flew on its graceful arc disappearing into the smoke. The noise and movement inside the cloud came to a stop. A heartbeat later a deafening boom stabbed into my ear drums, the force of the explosion scattering the dust cloud.</p>
<p>Albert stood perfectly fine atop the epicenter of the explosion, though Orochimaru was nowhere to be seen. He was glaring daggers at me.</p>
<p>"I think you just pissed him off," I noted as I lifted my Lewis gun to point right at Albert. He smirked. I pulled the trigger.</p>
<p>The gun barked and nearly jumped out of my hands as the recoil and mass of the device fought against my chakra enhanced muscles. I guess my low level delusion of being just like Rambo hadn't prepared me for the recoil of the gun. Bullets danced all around Albert, who just stood and stared.</p>
<p>Six rounds wasted I let off the trigger, reformed my grip, aimed, and fired again. This time the bullets were on target. To my shock, they didn't seem to do anything. Small bursts of blue light being my only indication that the hot lead wasn't poking him full of holes.</p>
<p>Albert chuckled, lifted one of his open palms, and a gem implanted in the palm of the gauntlet flashed bright white.</p>
<p>I was catapulted sideways as a blinding white beam of energy seared the air; I had just been occupying. I could smell the ozone and feel the hot flash on my face as I stared dumbfounded at what had almost killed me. I sprawled onto the ground.</p>
<p>"Here comes another!" I heard Sasuke growl from behind me, so I scrambled to my feet and lunged forward. Clearing yet another beam of energy that would've killed me.</p>
<p>This time I was able to recover quickly from my fall to the ground and jump into a full sprint as another beam followed me.</p>
<p>"Shit!" I yipped as the beam got uncomfortable close to my back, before petering out. Surprisingly, a new beam didn't follow. I turned to look at the man who was trying to kill me. He was staring at me.</p>
<p>"Do you speak the language of Old Earth?" He asked in English. I stopped in my run; his palm was pointing downwards.</p>
<p>"Yes, I am from Earth," I responded in English. Albert looked at me and laughed.</p>
<p>"Ha, good to hear it. So why did you not speak up, when I spoke in our language?" He asked, seeming genuinely perplexed.</p>
<p>"I didn't have the chance," I answered. Before Albert could say anything a hissing laugh came from on the other side of the throne room. We both turned to fix our gaze on the seemingly intact Orochimaru.</p>
<p>"Let us switch to the barbarian tongue of these lands," Albert said in English.</p>
<p>"Works for me," I said nonchalantly as I switched back into the local language.</p>
<p>"So what country are you from on old Earth?"</p>
<p>"I'm an American." I said. He laughed.</p>
<p>"You mean the cowards who didn't do anything, but profit off the bloodletting in Europe?" He said with a sneer.</p>
<p>"But, we did participate in World War One. Though, if the book's numbers are correct it was after your ship disappeared," I answered, hoping to mollify him.</p>
<p>"World War One? Does that mean there was a second one? Did my British folk win?" He asked, genuine concern in his voice.</p>
<p>"Yeah, both times. We helped you guys both times as well," I said hoping to further ingratiate myself.</p>
<p>"What year were you born and what year was it when you came here?"</p>
<p>"2002 and a white sphere abducted me in 2016." He mulled those numbers over for a bit and then started muttering.</p>
<p>"If it's truly been 100 years since we first set out at least on Earth time that must mean the timestreams are back in sync, though I didn't expect the factor of time speeding up in this world by such a large factor. Still, it would make sense," He muttered to himself, seemingly fully lost within his own head. Using this short break I swiveled my head from side to side, taking in the situation.</p>
<p>Orochimaru and Sasuke were doing similarly, our eyes glancing over each other, sizing each other up, determining who was the biggest threat. Sasuke was further down the axis we had already been running, Orochimaru was opposite to me on the other row of columns, and Albert was in the middle of the throne room in between all of us.</p>
<p>The standoff was broken by more noise coming down the entrance tunnel, that of running and yelling. To my great annoyance, it was the squad of Leaf ninja that I thought we had lost over the waterfall. The new noise broke Albert out of his mumblings, and he stared down the new witnesses.</p>
<p>"More friends of yours?" He said shooting the question my way. Before I could answer, Orochimaru stepped forward and spoke.</p>
<p>"Apologies, I believe there has been a terrible misunderstanding between us. I am Orochimaru, I am here for that boy," He pointed towards Sasuke, "Not that one," his finger shifted towards me.</p>
<p>"Though, I must know if it was you who broke my Cursed Seal of Heaven," he accused.</p>
<p>"Yeah, it was me, and it was easy to do so," I boasted.</p>
<p>"I see, will you tell me how you managed such a feat?" He asked.</p>
<p>"Trade secret, so no I won't." I said with a lot more confidence than I felt. He chuckled, sending a shiver down my spine.</p>
<p>"We'll see if you're so funny, when I'm busy learning what color your insides are," He said. But, before I could fire off a witty comeback Albert spoke over me.</p>
<p>"Sorry, but no you won't in fact none of you will leave here alive. Your life will be the longest," He pointed towards me, "But, it will be measured in hours while the rest of yours will be measured in days. His icy blue eyes locked on to me before sweeping over the Leaf ninja and Orochimaru.</p>
<p>I tightened my grip on the Lewis gun. The next second my eyes and ears were flooded with sensory information, chirping and a bright light illuminated my periphery. Albert had turned his back to Sasuke, and now it seemed that Sasuke had a trick up his sleeve.</p>
<p>Sasuke zoomed across the stone floor, a concentrated bundle of light and sound being concentrated in his palm. He shot forward like a cannonball and slammed the concentrated ball of energy into the back of Albert. Or at least he tried to.</p>
<p>I saw everything happen, but I only understood and comprehended it after I had been able to mentally re-watch the events frame by frame from my memory. When Sasuke and his energy punch had been roughly 6 inches away from impacting. A blue shield appeared and seemed to stop the energy punch dead in its tracks. At the same time, the gem at the center of Albert's chest seemed to pulse a light yellow. The blue shield held then pulsed backwards while simultaneously holding onto and absorbing the chakra in Sasuke's hand.</p>
<p>This all happened in under a second, and the end result was of Sasuke being flung away from Albert and slamming into a pillar. This drew the eyes of everyone except Orochimaru, who took the momentary distraction to weave a quick series of hand seals and then shoot a snake out of his mouth which itself had a sword extending out of its mouth. Creepy.</p>
<p>"Look out!" I shouted in alarm.</p>
<p>Asuma reacted drawing some sort of trench knives and deflecting the sword upwards. This left Orochimaru wide open, allowing Asuma to leap in for the attack.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, Albert was raising one of his open palms to Sasuke. One of the Leaf Ninja saw this and threw one of those Kunai with an explosive tag attached. This detonated on contact with the shield, but the concussive blast spoiled Alberts aim and the beam that would've turned Sasuke into a pool of hot slag went wide.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this drew Alberts attention back to the now Asuma-less Leaf ninja. Albert cracked a wicked grin leaped for them, murder in his eyes. Another kunai with an explosive tag impacted him dead on and managed to halt his momentum for a second. This apparently opened up an opportunity for the Shikamaru guy to use his Shadow Possession jutsu. Albert froze in-place, Hinata, the blue haired gal, took advantage and closed in on his flank. She let loose a palm strike while also releasing chakra, this did something interesting.</p>
<p>Instead of bouncing clean off his shield like every other attack we had thrown at it, the chakra from the palm strike seemed to disrupt the structure of the response shield. Punching a small hole in his shield, the remaining energy didn't do anything to his direct person. It got his attention.</p>
<p>Albert roared, flexing hard before breaking free of the possession jutsu and then swinging his left hand down and backwards in an open backhand that caught Hinata straight in the head and sent her flying backwards. The sudden violence of the act broke me out of my observing stupor.</p>
<p>I raised my Lewis gun and squeezed off a burst of rounds, at his head. Most of them missed, but they had the desired effect. The crack of supersonic projectiles flying over his head caused him to flinch and duck slightly. I guess the instincts to take cover when bullets were flying was a near universal reaction.</p>
<p>A jet of howling wind sent Asuma flying at high speed, directly into Albert. Who was also caught by the wind and sent careening into the wall. Turning my gaze to the right I spied Orochimaru, who was now wielding a sword. His eyes flicked to me then the stunned Leaf ninja, Shikamaru and Ino in particular were close together and exposed. I dropped my machine gun and full out sprinted towards them at full tilt.</p>
<p>Time slowed down as I took in the entire situation in its totality. Orochimaru had planted his foot and was beginning to swing his sword, in an effort to bisect both Shikamaru and Ino. Shikamaru and Ino were both facing Orochimaru and the incoming sword swing.</p>
<p>I had closed the distance and was now within arms of them. So I reached out with both my arms grasped one of their shoulders each and yanked with all my might. Since both of them had their backs turned to me, it was easy to pull them off balance into a backwards fall.</p>
<p>That task completed. I kicked out my heels, and let their weight drag me down with them. In the world's deadliest limbo game, I watched with sick fascination as the glinting steel blade slid above and by me. It clipped off a single rebellious curly red hair strand.</p>
<p>Mimicking a scene right out of a bad action movie, I reached my hand down to my pocket to draw the first of my stored handguns. Managing to not fumble or drop it, I have the gun in my hand and aimed in the general direction of the extended arm that held the sword that almost chopped my head in two.</p>
<p>I slammed into the ground and fired. Once, twice, three times. I just shot wildly at the extended arm above me. I squeezed the trigger over and over until the gun made a worrying click.</p>
<p>The screech of pain and the mist of red that came out of the arm of Orochimaru was satisfying, until I saw his murderous eyes glaring down at me. He still held the sword, and had followed through completely. He was now in perfect position to slash downwards at me and turn me into the human equivalent of a hotdog bun.</p>
<p>My free hand raced for my other pistol, but with the speed he had already demonstrated I knew I wouldn't make it on an intellectual level.</p>
<p>"Shadow possession complete," the voice to the left of me announced. I saw the eyes of Orochimaru widen as his movement halted for just a pair of heartbeats, all the time I needed.</p>
<p>As if guided by the best choreographer in Hollywood, my hand grasped the other pistol, pulled it out of my pocket while also raising the muzzle to point directly into the man standing before me. I squeezed the trigger.</p>
<p>A hit, center mass right in the chest. My arm fought the recoil perfectly, I squeezed again. And again, and again. His body jerked and spasmed as round after round of .45 acp turned his insides into jelly.</p>
<p>Before I knew it I had squeezed off 7 rounds in the pistol, all dead center into the chest of the still standing Orochimaru. His eyes still locked onto me, a collage of pain, hatred, and surprise. His howl of pain and rage failed to cut into my fear induced high.</p>
<p>The moment was brief as a flash of light and heat filled my vision, obscuring the form of the man. One second he was there, the next my eyes were filled with fire.</p>
<p>The blindness was brief as the ball of fire shot out of my perception and towards the wall. My eyes darted to the origin of the fireball. Sasuke and Hinata were both running towards us, their eyes focused on us. A gasp hissed from behind my line of site. I flipped my body, my back now facing upwards, while simultaneously I raised my head and pistol towards the sound.</p>
<p>Orochimaru leaned against the entranceway, staring at me.</p>
<p>"You've proven to be more interesting than I would've expected. I think I'll go claim my prize from an alternate source, if it doesn't work I'll just claim the original Sharingan again. So long for now." He hissed. He quickly ran through a set of hand gestures, before slamming them into the ground.</p>
<p>A wall of stone rose up and sealed the entranceway into the throne room. The fear that had consumed me drained away and I sagged in relief. I released a breath I didn't know I had been holding in.</p>
<p>I had somehow managed to not die against a guy who by all accounts was one of the meanest and deadliest people on the entire continent. Go me. Now all that was left was somehow dealing with Albert before he killed us all, and not getting captured by the Leaf ninja sent to scoop up Sasuke. Maybe, I could just let them have him. I mean he was just running away, and we didn't kill any of them so he might be fine. Heck, they could even let me go scot free. It could make life so easy.</p>
<p>No, like it or not I was tied to him by our shared knowledge of the hidden relics left behind by the people of my world. If I was the only one who could read and understand the language, then the village wouldn't let me just scamper off. They would keep me as a way for them to secure whatever was actually left, and at this point I wasn't so sure it was a good idea for anyone to have access to whatever had been left behind. I would have to think on this more, but for now Sasuke and I were riding and dying together.</p>
<p>"Ahem," a female voice prompted, snapping me out of my thinking. I looked over to see the miffed face of Ino staring at me. I raised a questioning eyebrow to her silent judgement. She tilted her head downwards, drawing my eyes to the fact that my shoulder was smashed into her side. I must have rolled a bit too much in my panic, and not noticed the close contact.</p>
<p>"Oh shit my bad," I yammered as I scooted backwards and pushed myself into an upright sitting position. Before she could respond, a pair of hands clenched under my armpits and yanked me up into a standing position.</p>
<p>"Fights not over," muttered Sasuke. This drew all the eyes of the Leaf Ninja in front of me.</p>
<p>"Uchiha," Shikamaru growled icily, his eyes hard and focused. Ino just glanced between Sasuke and me. Shino, who had been shielded from the entire scuffle just stepped forward, no discernable emotion marking his face.</p>
<p>"Nara," Sasuke responded with equal coolness. The awkward silence lasted ten seconds before I grew impatient.</p>
<p>"Alright enough's enough, you guys can finish the dick measuring contest later. Right now, we need to figure out how to not get vaporized by Mr. Shiny and Angry." I flicked my thumb to the general mass of dust that Asuma and Albert were located within. My profanity breaking the spell of awkwardness, everyone's eyes focused on me.</p>
<p>"We?" Ino asked, the question dripping with incredulity.</p>
<p>"Yes, WE. Listen, I frankly don't really have anything against you guys, we may have started off on the wrong foot. Right now, whatever conflicts and history are between you guys and us," I pointed to them and then to Sasuke and myself. "Those conflicts are irrelevant, Mr. Shiny there will kill us all regardless, so it's in our best interest to work together and defeat him. Then, we can settle whatever issues are between us. Got it?" I prompted. A pregnant silence followed my browbeating, before Shikamaru sighed.</p>
<p>"Your right, it does us no good to die in here. Do you have a plan already in mind?" He said, the tense atmosphere evaporating away.</p>
<p>"I do," I said before looking around and spotting the person who would have the information I needed.</p>
<p>"Hey, you have the chakra seeing Byakugan thing right?" I said pointing at Hinata. She shrunk back from my attention.</p>
<p>"Y-yes," she whispered.</p>
<p>"So did you see what happened when you did that palm strike thing against Mr. Shiny? I swore you punched a hole through the shield," I continued.</p>
<p>"Yes, the gentle fist did seem to weaken his shield," She answered.</p>
<p>"Did you also see the gem in the center of his chest pulse right after?"</p>
<p>"Yes, that was the origin of the chakra that reformed the shield."</p>
<p>"Okay, good that what I hoped for, if that's the case then we might have a way to beat him." I said before I quickly laid out the details for the rest of my plan.</p>
<p>In short, I would distract Albert enough so that Hinata could close in and deliver one of her Gentle Fist strike's to Albert's shield, preferably the front facing part of the shield. Shino would use his chakra eating bugs to get inside and eat at the chakra that would rush to reform the shield, while Shikamaru used his Shadow Possession to hold Albert still. Hopefully, long enough for either Ino or Sasuke to deliver a blow to shatter or break the gem that seemed to be powering his armor.</p>
<p>It wasn't a good plan by any means, and it had a million ways it could go wrong. But, it was the best I was able to come up with that seemed to have the best chance of negating the shield that Albert was using.</p>
<p>It wasn't a second too late either, because just as I had finished explaining the plan. A cry came from where Asuma and Albert had been battling. Looking over, I saw that Asuma was down and was almost about to be finished off, so I sprung up and yelled the first insult that came to mind.</p>
<p>"Hey! Tommy! Did I tell you that your fellow black and tans got their ass kicked by the Irish!" I hollered as I broke into a run for my dropped Lewis gun. This seemed to get him riled up and he whirled towards me.</p>
<p>"What!" He howled in outrage.</p>
<p>"Yeah! That's right your tea drinking buddies got their ass beat by Paddy O'Flannigan and his catholic buddies!" I egged him even further.</p>
<p>"You impudent simpleton!" He roared. I reached and scooped up my Lewis gun, training it on him. I opened fire.</p>
<p>Bullets pounded into the shield, doing nothing but annoying him further. He leveled his palm at me, forcing me to roll to the side as a beam of searing energy attempted to cut me down.</p>
<p>"Were you one of those poor bastards who lost to a bunch of Dutch farmers?" I taunted resuming my firing. The gun chattered and bucked in my grip, but I kept it on target. My taunt earned me another beam of energy I had to dodge. Before I could rise to start firing again a gauntleted fist came out of nowhere and planted into my gut.</p>
<p>I found myself flying for a moment, unable to breath, my machine gun lost in the blow. This brief experience as a cannonball ended when I slammed back first into a wall. It felt like I had been whacked with a baseball bat in my guts before being hit by a speeding train. My vision went blurry and I felt the unpleasant sensation of every organ in my body doing their best to escape out of my body. I crumpled to the ground.</p>
<p>Time and feeling seemed to melt away from my conscious mind, though my memory still continued to work and feed me clear information the second I experienced it. It was odd, I wasn't able to access the conscious streams of data my senses were gathering. But, I was able to access the memory of those senses the very moment they were written to my memory. It was as if I was experiencing things through a stream that had a half second delay.</p>
<p>This delayed experience allowed me to feel myself be grabbed and lifted up by my neck. My limp body was raised to eye level, so my eyes could meet those of Albert. Fear bubbled up from my guts, and I felt the claws of panic try to tear their way into my emotional state.</p>
<p>"When I'm done with you and your friends, I'm going to make sure your pathetic excuse for a country is razed to dust. I'll make sure that everyone knows which impudent little child insulted me to do such a thing. Your parents, friends, and family will all know your big mouth will be responsible for their deaths." His eyes flashed a crimson red.</p>
<p>"Up yours," I gurgled in response. His face twisted into even more enraged sneer before twisting into a wicked grin.</p>
<p>"For that insult, I'll kill you, then resurrect you so you can watch your family die before I kill you again," He snarled, tightening the grip around my neck. I lost the ability to suck in air for the witty response I had planned.</p>
<p>My vision started to close in as I felt the pressure around me tighten, all sensory information being drowned out by the pain of my neck. Even the dispassionate analysis and recall of my memory started to be fuzzed over as recalled pain layered over more recalled pain.</p>
<p>I was going to die. I was 100% going to die. This truth fractured what little control I had over my own mind and I was flooded with the experience of every second of life since I had started to remember things.</p>
<p>All of the sensations, feelings, experiences, and ideas all crashing together at the speed of thought inside my squishy brain. I was subsumed, and overwritten.</p>
<p>Fear and pain vanished. Their experience being diluted to nothing, by the combined force of my pasts. In their place the feelings of safety and confidence filled my soul. I was Roger Walker, and I had been confident and safe for a lot longer than I had been scared and in pain. I would not die afraid, I would live!</p>
<p>The sense of closing and despair that had sealed me off from my senses evaporated, and I came awake to the present. I was Roger Walker; I was being choked to death by a crazy Englishman in golden armor.</p>
<p>My reawakening must have been evident on my face because Albert flinched backwards. My body ached, my neck felt like it was in between a pair of pliers, and I had a bitching headache, but I was not dead yet.</p>
<p>My arms felt heavy, but I still had control of them. I focused on my left arm and I demanded it respond. Putting all of my anger, defiance, and raw spite into my command I order it to punch back. I willed the muscles to tense up and strike back, my chakra pulsing and flowing to aid the tissue in its task.</p>
<p>"Fuck you," I gurgled though it came out as a generally intelligible string of grunts. I swung an upward flowing left hook. I put everything I had into the fist. It came inches from his face before being stopped by his damned energy shield.</p>
<p>His eyes widened and darted to the fist. I kept pushing, putting all my reserves of strength and emotion into getting that fist to meet his face. The shield pushed back, so I pushed even harder. The shield shuddered and started to spark. I pushed harder. His eyes widened in alarm. I put every last ounce of energy into my arm. The shield sparked and bowed inwards. I was going to get him!</p>
<p>The grip around my neck tightened to unbearable levels. I didn't care, I was going to knock the stupid son of bitch silly. His eyes narrowed in concentration, before shooting wide open. His mouth opened.</p>
<p>A flash of light, and a familiar sound cut into my single minded focus. The sound of birds chirping, and a brightness that mirrored the sun. It appeared for a moment, then disappeared, then reappeared in front of me. The noise and light blinded me, the grip on my neck grew tighter then slackened.</p>
<p>A hand protruded from the spot where the gem had lay within Albert's chest. A hand covered in dripping red blood. My eyes snapped back to Albert's, I saw panic, fear, and pain cross his expression in a single moment. Then, the icy unnatural blue in his eyes seemingly poured away and I was left staring at unfamiliar brown eyes. The grip on me loosened, and gravity pulled me to the ground.</p>
<p>My chest heaved drawing in fresh air before expelling in it a fit of coughs. My vision widening as a black tunneling that I hadn't noticed until now receded. Albert collapsed to his knees then crumpled onto this side.</p>
<p>Behind him stood Sasuke, and the others all of their gazes fixed on me. I coughed again, before sucking a deep breath of cool refreshing air. I was alive. A noise pierced the dreamlike fog that had settled over my mind. It was sobbing.</p>
<p>My eyes tracked the sound to the face of Albert, who looked nothing like he had just moments ago. His face contorted in pain and fear.</p>
<p>"H-H-help," he whined, "Maa, Help!" T</p>
<p>He didn't sound like a crazed ancient man, he sounded like a scared boy.</p>
<p>"I don't wanna die mom!" He burbled. Something in me twinged, and before I could realize it I had dragged myself over to him. He was face down in the ground, his body sideways. Unthinkingly, I rolled him over to his back and held his head up.</p>
<p>Brown eyes focused on me.</p>
<p>"Help me! h-he put me in that machine and then I wasn't in control. I was trapped - had to watch! He made me do evil things!" He wailed in English.</p>
<p>"It's gonna be okay," I found myself saying as I cradled his head. Tears streamed down his face.</p>
<p>"Nuh, I'mma die here! I'mma never gon' to see my ma or da again! Ma'll think I died a coward. I'm not a coward, I'm not!" He wailed.</p>
<p>"You're a brave boy, they know you're not a coward," I soothed.</p>
<p>"I was just a tryna be brave, me brother was fighting in the war. They said they needed sailors, so I snuck onto a ship, was gonna show how brave I was," He blubbered.</p>
<p>"You are brave. It's going to be okay," I lied. Lies that tore into parts of me that I didn't know I had. His eyes locked onto me and they cleared for a moment.</p>
<p>"You gotta stop them! You have to stop them!" He said in a panic yelp.</p>
<p>"Who? Who do I have to stop?" I said.</p>
<p>"The other's, the ones Al put to sleep, but now that he's dead they're gonna wake up! They're gonna go home! Ma's in danger!" He stammered in panic.</p>
<p>"Others?"</p>
<p>"In the book! This book!" He patted the book attached to his belt.</p>
<p>"You gotta stop em, you gotta save me ma and da!"</p>
<p>"I will stop them; no harm will come to your parents."</p>
<p>"Promise, you gotta promise," he begged.</p>
<p>"I promise," I said solemnly.</p>
<p>"If ya can, tell'em I wasn't a coward, tell'em I was brave. Tell'em Sean Hooper was brave and didn't mean to hurt anyone. Please!" He begged. I felt tears of my own threaten to spill, but I swallowed them.</p>
<p>"I'll tell'em you were the bravest, don't worry Sean. I'll tell everyone," I said, my voice warbling. This seemed to ease the panic and fear in him, as his expression became serene and unfocused.</p>
<p>"Thank you, there's a tunnel behind the throne. It goes to the surface, this place is gonna fall now," he murmured.</p>
<p>"Okay, I'll escape and stop 'em. I'll tell them it was thanks to you Sean Hooper that everyone will be safe," I stammered tears streaming down my face. He smiled a distant forgetful smile.</p>
<p>"Thank you, I trust you now I'm gonna take a quick nap to rest my eyes," He muttered, his eyelids closing. His chest rising one final time before exhaling and smiling the calmest smile I had ever seen. He didn't move again.</p>
<p>Something deep inside broke, and I let out a wail of grief. My eyes blurred over as I mourned the death of a person whose spark of life had died in my arms. Time melted away for a terrible moment. Sean Hooper, brave boy, was dead. He was dead because of me.</p>
<p>A firm grip rested on my shoulder, snapping me back to the moment I looked up. Seeing the firm gaze of Sasuke Uchiha staring down at me, he saw something and looked away. I swiveled my head and met the gazes of the Leaf ninja who had hours before been trying to hurt me. I took in the looks they gave me, but I didn't process them. I was numb.</p>
<p>*Crack*</p>
<p>A loud cracking emanated from all around, and I snapped back to reality.</p>
<p>"We need to get out of here, there's an escape tunnel behind the throne." I said dully.</p>
<p>Sasuke being the person of action reached down and snapped up the book that had been held to the belt. He gave me a pair of shoulder squeezes, and then threw a smoke bomb into the ground. He yanked me upwards onto my feet.</p>
<p>"We need to go!" He ordered.</p>
<p>Working on Autopilot I followed his grip as he led me out of the smoke to the throne. The Leaf ninja were all shouting and stumbling around. Reaching the throne, I spotted a track that had been etched into the ground. Sasuke grabbed the edge of the throne and pulled. It swung out like a door revealing an illuminated passage that angled upwards.</p>
<p>I turned back to the Leaf ninja we had left behind. They had gotten their bearings and had just noticed the appearance of the escape tunnel. I saw Asuma being helped along by Shino.</p>
<p>"Will they be okay?" I asked.</p>
<p>"Yes! Now let's go or else we aren't going to make it very far!" Sasuke growled giving my shoulder another tug. I turned and followed him.</p>
<p>We ran up the tunnel as quickly as our battered bodies could take us. At the end we reached what looked like a pair of double doors that were latched with a crossbar. Sasuke lifted the crossbar out of the latch and pushed on the doors. They swung open revealing a lush forest ahead.</p>
<p>We took off into the forest. The one concession I earned was that we waited behind a tree out of sight. When the exhausted and disheveled voices of the Leaf ninja reached our ears we bolted. We put several miles between us and the exit doors before turning about and setting course for the Land of Waterfalls and hopefully Tsunoda. Sasuke had readily agreed that hiding out with a trusted ally would be ideal until we could plan our next move.</p>
<p>We traveled in silence. It was a pleasant silence.</p>
<p>-------------------------------------------------<br/>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Side Story: The Debriefing</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>September 24th Near Midnight, 2016 RY</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Konoha</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Conference Room</b>
</p>
<p>"So in summary, they got away?" Tsunade asked as her mouth contorted into a frown.</p>
<p>"Yes, Hokage-sama." Asuma Sarutobi confirmed with a small head bow. Tsunade sighed, reaching over, and taking a swig of her Sake. It was late.</p>
<p>Asuma's team had arrived a couple hours after sundown, battered and bruised. Tsunade had been just about to call it day when they had stumbled through the gates of Konoha. This forced her to call a meeting of the minds, to debrief the returning team. They met in one of the main conference rooms that were sprinkled around the Hokage Tower.</p>
<p>In attendance were the clan heads, Anko, the jounin sensei, Homura, Koharu, and Danzo. In short, everyone who mattered was present.</p>
<p>"Anyone have any questions?" Tsunade said, yielding the floor.</p>
<p>"Can you confirm if the cursed seal was really removed?" Anko asked immediately. Asuma looked over to the hunched over Hinata Hyuga and gestured.</p>
<p>"A-as far as my Byakugan could tell I could see no trace of any foreign chakra within Uchiha-sans body," Hinata stammered, glancing at her stern faced father.</p>
<p>"We have to find this kid and figure out how he did it," Anko muttered.</p>
<p>"Did you gain any hint as to how he removed the seal in the first place?" Kakashi inquired. Asuma shook his head.</p>
<p>"No, the fact that he had broken the seal was only mentioned twice. Once when he had him captured and another when he was taunting Orochimaru," Asuma stated.</p>
<p>"Kid must have had balls of steel or be really stupid," Anko murmured.</p>
<p>"Can you confirm that Sasuke Uchiha is not in the possession of Orochimaru?" Danzo probed.</p>
<p>"No, but it seems highly unlikely. Whatever weapon that kid used did a lot of damage, I would highly suspect that as of this moment, Orochimaru is not in a position to make another play at Sasuke," Asuma explained.</p>
<p>"Which brings up another question, who is this person with Uchiha? Where are they from? Why do they speak in a language that no-one has ever heard of? How are they using amazing weapons capable of matching the strength of one of the Sanin? And how did they stumble upon a hidden underground place in a valley that has been surveyed at least a dozen times?" Homura rattled off. Tsunade cut in.</p>
<p>"All of those are good questions, however I suspect approximations to answers can only be found time and self-reflection. We can do later debriefings to piece together the information, for now let's just stick to the basic facts," Tsunade said gracefully shutting down a line of questions that would go nowhere fast.</p>
<p>"I have a question, what do you mean the boy had a perfect memory?" Kurenai piped up. Ino didn't need any prompting to speak up.</p>
<p>"It is common knowledge that the Yamanaka Mind Possession Jutsu, does not access memories. Controlling a body is a difficult thing, and adding in a component that would allow for accessing memories would stretch the concentration and abilities to the breaking point," Ino glanced at her father, who nodded in approval.</p>
<p>"When I possessed Roger's body. I was immediately flooded with a stream of perfectly recalled images, sensations, and feelings. I had full access to every sight, smell, and sensation he experienced that morning and many other mornings. I was able to count the number of leaves on every tree we jogged by during my part of the initial trap plan. It made controlling him extremely difficult," She relayed.</p>
<p>"Ah, so is that how he broke free?" Kurenai followed up. Ino shook her head.</p>
<p>"No, it was difficult, but I was managing to keep in control of him. Then, he did something to himself." She trailed off.</p>
<p>"Did something?" Kurenai prompted.</p>
<p>"It's like he had actually conscious control of his memory recall, and he opened the floodgates fully. For a moment it was like I experienced every second of Roger's life in perfect detail, and then he found me inside him, and he beat me out of his head." Ino said almost to herself. A far off look clouding her eyes.</p>
<p>"Concerning, Inochi I trust you'll take care to examine and observe Ms. Yamanaka to ensure she has no issues that could be lingering?" Tsunade asked, focusing on Inochi.</p>
<p>"Yes Hokage-sama, I will ensure she is thoroughly checked and observed." Inochi said.</p>
<p>"Good, so this leaves us with a final question. what do we do now?" Tsunade asked. The question hung in the air for a moment.</p>
<p>"We track him and recover him. We cannot afford for the last Uchiha to fall into the hands of another village," Koharu stated.</p>
<p>"That's assuming we can even find him again, what if they go completely silent. We don't have the manpower to search an entire continent," Tsunade countered.</p>
<p>"They're two kids, how well can they hide from the entire espionage apparatus of a great village?" Homura responded.</p>
<p>"That remains to be seen. Although, if they do appear again I support another capture attempt," Shikaku commented.</p>
<p>"So we wait for them to just pop up again? For all we know Iwa or Kumo could already know where they are! It would be cataclysmic if Onoki got his hands on the Sharingan!" Koharu objected.</p>
<p>"I doubt Iwa, Kumo or really anyone else knows where they are at the moment. If they did they'd be mobilizing a massive force to secure them. We haven't seen any movement from either of them," Tsunade placated.</p>
<p>"So then what do we do!" Koharu exclaimed, throwing up her hands.</p>
<p>"Enough!" Tsunade commanded. The room fell silent, small side conversations died away.</p>
<p>"The facts have been laid out; we're not going to get any closer to a solution by arguing all night. It's been a long day; we can sleep on the facts we know and pick up the discussion again tomorrow." Tsunade fixed everyone with a glare. A chorus of nods met her declaration.</p>
<p>"What do you think?" Tsunade asked. The meeting had adjourned, and she had returned back to the Hokage tower. Jiraiya, leaned against a wall staring out at the night skyline of the village.</p>
<p>"About?" He said.</p>
<p>"You damn well know what!" Tsunade snapped. Jiraiya sighed.</p>
<p>"If he's well and truly out of Orochimaru's reach and can remain so, it might be better to let him remain outside of the village," Jiraiya mused.</p>
<p>"You can't be serious," Tsunade accused.</p>
<p>"I am. The old man perhaps gave some people too long of a leash in his later years," Jiraiya noted.</p>
<p>"Danzo? He wouldn't dare try anything."</p>
<p>"Wouldn't he? He'd have the justification to make a push for taking Sasuke under his "personal" tutelage. He's had a long time to cultivate relationships and gain favors," Jiraiya said, pushing away from the wall and walking up to the Hokage desk.</p>
<p>"I'd still block it." Tsunade defended.</p>
<p>"I'm not sure you'd be able to, there's a lot of antipathy from the clans towards the last Uchiha. I would be convenient to a lot of them, if he could be leashed and used to build a more "loyal" Uchiha clan. Your position is still unstable, and if he was willing to cash in enough favors I could see him pulling it off," Jiraiya said as he picked up Tsunade's bottle of Sake and took a long pull from it. This gave Tsuande time to run through her head to the hypothetical, she blanched.</p>
<p>"Gimme that," She snapped, swiping the bottle from Jiraiya, and taking an even bigger pull.</p>
<p>"What the hell do we do?" She said after downing a fortifying amount of the liquor.</p>
<p>"Depends, I think I'm going to go on a little "errand" out of the village for a bit." Jiraiya mused.</p>
<p>"If you find them?"</p>
<p>"I'll improvise. If they seem like they're gonna be able to keep away from Orochimaru, I'll see if I can work something out so they can stay in contact, but out of reach of Orochimaru, Danzo, and the other villages."</p>
<p>"And if it seems like they won't?" Tsunade asked.</p>
<p>"I'll improvise something else," Jiraiya said with a shrug. Tsunade barked a derisive laugh.</p>
<p>"You don't do much to instill confidence," Tsunade grumbled.</p>
<p>"It's a difficult situation," he responded with a shrug.</p>
<p>"Will you bring Naruto?"</p>
<p>"No, the last thing he needs is more chaos. Let him simmer down and go on some more missions here. It should put him in the right mood for the training trip," Jiraiya replied.</p>
<p>"You're a crafty bastard, you know that?" Tsunade said with a chuckle.</p>
<p>"It's one of my best traits," Jiraiya said with a smile before he disappeared out the window.</p>
<p>Tsunade frowned, she hated it when he did that.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And there marks the end of chapter five! Hopefully, the story and its characters are really starting to take shape. I know my understanding of where I want to go with this is much greater compared to when I finished the previous chapter.</p>
<p>Similarly, I hope you enjoyed the "little" side story that I tacked on at the end. The world keeps turning even if our protagonists aren't there to see it. I hope little stories like this among other supplemental material will help in firming out the details of the story and world I'm doing my best to mold and tell.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think Ino is going to play a much bigger role in the story than initially planned, definitely in relation to Roger. I'm not sure if I'm willing to call it a pairing, or indicate that it's an endgame, but the more scene's I write them in, the surer I get that it will at least be an interesting dynamic. Though, if that changes based on what the exact situation is later in the story I'm not sure.</p>
<p>Finally, I would like to thank you for hanging around this long to read this little passion project of mine. I hope my skills to write and entertain are rising with each passing chapter. I do intend to go back and bring the old chapters up to a higher level of quality I'm sure I can do now. I also plan on adding more side stories, addendums, and other little goodies at the end of previously posted chapters to add more juicy details to the story. Anyway, thank you for reading this far! If I've captured your interest please I want to hear your thoughts! Engagement is what keeps me motivated to keep writing.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Another chapter done, though I wouldn’t be shocked if I realize I left in a dumb error. Which I will sneakily edit</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>September 24th Midnight, 2016 RY<br/>
Uncharted Forest<br/>
Campsite </b>
</p>
<p>After our battle and escape from the vault, we travelled in silence for the rest of the day. Now suspecting everyone of being in cahoots with the Leaf Village we camped out in the woods that night. We set up camp in a clearing at the bottom of a valley. It was only after we had built a warm crackling fire that the silencing tension that had gripped me fell away. </p>
<p>“So,” I said my eyes glued to the dancing of the small firelight.</p>
<p>“So,” Sasuke responded.</p>
<p>“Well that was absolute fucking mess. What do we do now?,” I blurted out. Sasuke only shrugged in response.</p>
<p>“I mean honestly, I have no idea what the hell happened. First we were in a hidden bunker, next thing we were fighting for our lives against two different nutjobs, and then the next thing I’m holding a dying kid who apparently was possessed by someone else and that's who we were fighting. I just don’t get it,” I bemoaned, I was flummoxed by the situation. Sasuke sighed.</p>
<p>“So why exactly are those leaf ninja guys chasing after you to begin with?” I asked, the question snapping to the forefront of my overcharged head.</p>
<p>Sasuke’s demeanor darkened for a moment. </p>
<p>“Look, I know you’re a runaway ninja, that you were going to Orochimaru because he offered power, and that your former buddies want you back. I get all of that, what I don’t get is why you need so much power in the first place,” I probed.</p>
<p>Sasuke grimaced and looked away. He said nothing.</p>
<p>“Dude, whatever it is you should tell me. I need to know what hands we are both playing with here, I’ve shown you my hand. I told you about my world, I told you about the promise I made to Old Salt, and I’ve helped be the translator for a language you can’t read. I’m not saying you have to tell me every time you wet the bed, but at least lay out what you’re playing at so we can work together. We agreed to that right? Working together? So help me, help you. I can’t do that if I know fuck-all about what you’re actually playing at,” I pleaded.<br/>
Sasuke was still dead for a minute, his breathing the only indication he was even alive. The inaction was broken by him letting a long exhausted sigh. He turned back to me. His Sharingan activated. </p>
<p>“Fine, but what is said here, doesn’t leave here. Unless I say so, you will share this with no-one. Understand?” He said. </p>
<p>I nodded in response.</p>
<p>“Good, it all began…”</p>
<p>I sat and listened as Sasuke told his tale. He told me about his childhood, about his brother, and his family. He told me how his life had been shattered one day, how his brother had massacred every man, woman, child, and infant in his clan. How he used his Mangekyou Sharingan to trap his young little brother in a looping rerun of his family’s murder. How he had taunted him before escaping into the night. </p>
<p>Periodically Sasuke would pause in his storytelling, either to throw more wood into the fire or to just stare into the dancing flames.</p>
<p>His tale did not end with his clan’s death at the hands of his brother. He continued on to detail the rest of youth life. His loneliness, his ever present drive to grow stronger, his hatred, and his single minded focus on revenge. The grimness in his tale began to break as he detailed his graduation, and his genin team. His retelling took on more of a positive tone as he explained the team, the enigmatic teacher, the starstruck girl, and the loudmouthed rival. He recalled how they had suffered, laughed, and fought together. His voice became lighter as he detailed the antics and adventures, he and his friends had experience.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last. His explanation of how he received his cursed seal, how his brother had returned out of his nightmares, and how he had been casually thrown aside by his brother despite his best efforts. The factoid that the Sharingan would gain power if he was to slay a friend, sent a chill up my spine. Failure after failure all piling up on him, hammering in the fact that he was weak. He had to do something, anything so that he could reverse what seemed to be an inevitable slide into failure.</p>
<p> His friends had noticed this sliding into darkness and did all they could to try and reverse his course. It was too little, too late. Orochimaru had dispatched a squad of goons who first beat him silly, then presented an offer to him. An offer to become stronger and to learn from the best of the best. It was the straw that had broken the camel's back, and Sasuke accepted it.</p>
<p>Sasuke's eyes had shied away from mine and had focused on the fire as he explained his betrayal. The dancing flame providing a judgment free listener.</p>
<p>The final act of the story being his awakening from the sealing barrel, and his fight with his friend Naruto. He mostly glossed over the details of the fight, but he focused on one thing. How when the end had come, he had been a hair's breadth away from killing his friend outright, but instead had spared him. His tale ended with him noting that he had been walking away from this conflict when I had both metaphorically and literally knocked him off his path.</p>
<p>We were both silent, I wanted to sort out my thoughts before replying. My eyes were glued on the dancing flame of the fire.</p>
<p>In short, Sasuke Uchiha was a deeply troubled kid who had been teetering on the edge of darkness for years, before bad luck and the machinations of others tried to push him over. This fate only being avoided by me running into him and knocking him off course. So now having been derailed from his previous path he found himself in an odd position with no real clear pathway to what he wanted, besides that of the vague promise of power I had stumbled onto.</p>
<p>Now, was it good that he had almost killed his friend by shoving his hand through his heart? No, that was definitely an unideal way to get one's point across. Similarly, betraying your village and joining up with a nutjob who wants your body for your super eyes is also something that could be called a “bad judgement call”. </p>
<p>On the other hand though, the dude had so much emotional and psychological baggage that you’d have to rent out a semi-truck to carry it anywhere. I mean if my sister had gone nuts and killed everyone I had known and cared about I would also have a couple screws loose. Though, surprisingly he seemed to still have a core of ethics and goodness. So at least I could bet he wasn’t an unsalvageable bad person, though he was definitely still carrying around a lot of darkness.</p>
<p>Now would the upside that he could be a good person again be enough for me to excuse what he had done to his friends and why he was chasing power to execute revenge against his brother?</p>
<p>Maybe? Honestly, I had no idea, though part of me was saying.</p>
<p>‘Holy shit this guy is a loon, get the fuck away from him right now!’</p>
<p>A different part of me was saying.</p>
<p>‘Look, he may carry more baggage than a 747, but he’s still a good kid. He just needs a dependable pal, and some time away from all this ninja fuckery to get his head screwed on straight’</p>
<p>Either decision would be equally valid, at least they should’ve been in theory. In reality, I found I actually empathized with the kid and agreed at least in principle with him on some points. Plus, what else was I going to do? I sucked in a deep breath as I refocused on the living world. </p>
<p>“So everything is centered around you killing your brother?” I said not looking at him. He hesitated before responding.</p>
<p>“Yes” I looked up to see Sasuke’s gaze still locked onto the fire.</p>
<p>“Well good then,” Sasuke snapped up to look me straight in the eye. “Because from what you’ve told me it seems like he had an overdue appointment with my foot up his ass.” I said with a grin. The look of abject shock on Sasuke’s face was priceless.</p>
<p>“Y-you agree?” He stuttered in incomprehension.</p>
<p>“Fuck yes I do, he murdered his whole family, killed a bunch of innocent kids and infants, and mentally tortured a seven year old. He’s a stain on the very concept of humanity, and I would not shed a tear if he had a brain aneurysm tomorrow. So yes, I will help you kill Itachi, because if you don’t and I ever get a hold of him, I’ll finish the job,” I boasted with all the bravado a dumb teenager could manage.</p>
<p>A grin curled Sasuke’s lip. “There won’t be anything left after I’m done with him,” he boasted.</p>
<p>“Good, make sure to at least leave enough of him so we can put him up in the ‘Dumbasses who fucked with the wrong people’ Museum,” I said.</p>
<p>“I hope they accept ash.”</p>
<p>“They do, but we have to label it properly otherwise they might just throw it in the dumpster”</p>
<p>We both laughed, the grave atmosphere of the past hours melting away. Were we being stupid?</p>
<p>Yeah. Did it matter? Not in the slightest. </p>
<p>We continued to joke around until the pull of hunger clawed us away from our joking. Fortunately, Sasuke had thought ahead and had laid out a couple small game traps. Checking them we found he had snagged a single rabbit, which in Sasuke’s experienced hands rapidly became a collection of rabbit kebab sticks all slowly roasting over the fire.</p>
<p>The smell of cooking meat awakening my stomach to the fact I hadn’t eaten breakfast before I had been intercepted by Ino during my jog. It was like I had lived more in this one day than I had in several months. The pace of everything was dizzying, yet I could remember it all and knew for a fact that only 12 hour, 26 minutes, and 48 seconds had passed since I had started out on my jog.</p>
<p>“Food’s ready,” Sasuke said, snapping me out of my ruminations. In short order we demolished the rabbit kebab in front of us as a tornado would through an Oklahoma trailer park.<br/>
Our hunger sated, in unison we sat back and sighed in contentment. The fire was crackling, the bugs were chirping, and the moon hung overhead. It was a moment of serenity, and life was good.</p>
<p>“So what now?” The question ripped me out of my contented haze, and back into reality.</p>
<p>“Hmm?” </p>
<p>“So what's the plan now?” Sasuke asked again. That was a good question, I had no idea.</p>
<p>“Uhh,” I drawled stupidly.</p>
<p>“We should open that book to see if it points the way to something.”</p>
<p>“Good idea,” I said as Sasuke moved over to sit beside me and handed me the book.</p>
<p>I examined it. No clear outside markings, and it was just in a plain hard binding. I flipped open the book and examined the page. English letters and numbers covered the page, just not in any discernible order. I frowned and flipped to the next page. It also was a soup of letters and numbers. I started flipping page after page, the majority of the book was the same letter and number spaghetti, though there were some diagrams and drawings, though the labels were also nonsensical chains of letters and numbers. I flipped ever faster, making sure I could commit every single page to memory before I even started to try and figure out what to do.</p>
<p>“Fuck, I think this book is written in a cipher,” I groaned.</p>
<p>“Can you decode it?” He asked. </p>
<p>“Maybe? There might be a key hidden in here somewhere, I did read a book on old ciphers 3 years ago so I’m not working blind, but I’m not sure,” I said as I flipped back to the first page and started to try and decode the letter soup. </p>
<p>“So there's a chance?” Sasuke implored. I pursed my lips. On the face of it, I had no idea. But, a little tugging at the back of my consciousness told me that I was missing something. In recent months, I had learned to listen to the little hint my brain would whisper to me.</p>
<p>“Probably,” I said with a lot more confidence than I held.</p>
<p>“Okay well that's something, so again I ask what do we do now?” Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>“Well, I guess we can’t go back to Kohama, and it would probably be best to keep on the move so that no-one can zero in on our location. You’re the local, do you have any ideas?” I ventured. Sasuke shook his head.</p>
<p>“I’ve been in the Leaf village most of my life, my knowledge of where to hide is extremely limited.”</p>
<p>“Damnit, wait I might have a place for us to go.” I snapped my fingers as a memory flashed through my mind.</p>
<p>“Where?” </p>
<p>“Honnobe, it's in the Land of Waterfalls. One of my friends was transferred there before Kawaguchi had his fort raided. If he’s still there he might be able to point us towards a place that's safe and out of the way,” I explained.</p>
<p>“Do you know how to get there?”</p>
<p>“Yep, that's where I was initially going before I ran into you,” I said.<br/>
“Great, then I guess we go there. In the meantime, let's keep decoding the book to see if it can give us any hints,” Sasuke nodding excitedly.</p>
<p>“Sure, but in exchange you need to teach me how to fight better. Having faced real ninja today, I can safely say I have no idea how to actually fight. I just got lucky today if I have to face a real opponent. I’m fucked,” I said. Sasuke nodded in agreement.</p>
<p>“I’ve already been thinking about that, and I might have a plan to help train you, though it might not work,” Sasuke commented. I blinked in surprise, the fact that he had already been thinking about it was slightly touching in a ’he vaguely cares about me’ way.</p>
<p>“Huh, cool.” I responded. We sat in silence for a moment before a yawn escaped my mouth as the enormity of the day crashed over me.</p>
<p>“Tired?” Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>“A bit,” I deflected, stifling another yawn.</p>
<p>“You should sleep, it’s been a busy day.” </p>
<p>“What about you?” I inquired, my eyes already starting to flutter.</p>
<p>“I have some stuff to think about. I’ll take care of the fire before I go to bed,” Sasuke deflected.</p>
<p>“Gotcha, should we set a watch?” I said.</p>
<p>“Probably, but honestly I just don’t care enough at this point to,” Sasuke responded.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Well if ya do, feel free to wake me,” I said as I scrunched up my backpack to use as a pillow and laid down. </p>
<p>“Noted,” He commented. The warmth and crackling of the fire lulling me to sleep.</p>
<p>-----<br/>
<b>September 25th Midnight, 2016 RY<br/>
Rogers Mindscape<br/>
? </b></p>
<p>It was an odd sensation going from awake to asleep to awake. I was standing atop a grassy hill, a river valley stretched out before me, and a pleasant breeze tussled my hair. It was a very familiar place</p>
<p>“So is this going to be a regular thing going forward now?” I said to no-one in particular.</p>
<p>“Wow, just woow. No ‘thank you for masterminding a way to kick a hijacker out of our mind’? No, ‘Thank you for coming up with a battle plan and then doing all the hard work’? Not even a ‘Hey, I respect you and your hard work in keep me sane and don’t worry I won’t read anything strenuous’? Instead you hit me ‘So is this going to be a regular thing now?’ God you are such a fucking prick,” I turned around to see the annoyed grimace of myself staring back at me.</p>
<p>“You know you’re calling yourself a prick right?” I reposted. In response, Other me flipped me off. I laughed.</p>
<p>“I kid, I kid. Anyway, can I call you Other me? We never really hammered out the whole name situation last time I was here,” I commented. Other me raised his finger to talk, but I cut him off.</p>
<p>“And, yes I know you're actually me. And that you're just a metaphorical representation of my consciousness that deals with memories and other background stuff. But, still at least it would make it less confusing for both of us,” I preempted. Other me sighed.</p>
<p>“Sure, fuck it. Never mind how stupid it is to name your own consciousness ‘Other me,’ regardless we can still roll with it,” Other me responded.</p>
<p>“Okay, and I am thankful for you. That first plan you came up with worked to perfection,” I complimented. Other Me stood a bit taller. </p>
<p>“I wasn’t just the first plan, but almost every other calculation and smooth motion you did today was my work,” Other me boasted.</p>
<p>“Wait, really? The rock throw at Orochimaru?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Yep!”</p>
<p>“The boat slide?”</p>
<p>“Also yep”</p>
<p>“Even the waterfall stunt?” </p>
<p>“Still me”</p>
<p>“Lemme guess, you also choreographed me doing the limbo under Orochimaru’s sword,”</p>
<p>“Right again,” Other me beamed. I balked for a second before a sly grin curled my face.</p>
<p>“Wait, did you also engineer me rolling and sticking my elbow into the chest of a certain blonde brain hijacker?” I said, wiggling my eyebrows. Other Me’s face flushed.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure w-what you’re talking about,” He deflected. It was odd making yourself embarrassed.</p>
<p>“Oh ho ho, you’re not getting away that easily buddy. We both know what we felt and saw. You’re a real sly dog aren’t ya? Here I am fighting for my life relying fully on instinct, and you’re in the background making sure we roll straight into the same gal who hijacked our mind and stick out our elbow to stabilize our gun in such a way that conveniently pokes other ‘things’ I am truly impressed,” I teased.</p>
<p>“Oh go fuck yourself, you think she was hot too,” Other me said pointing an accusatory finger at me.</p>
<p>“Sure, I do. Doesn’t mean I have the mental bandwidth to consider being that sly while I’m out there fighting to keep us alive, you have the time to consider and plot,” I said bringing my hands together in a stereotypical villain pose. Other me just flipped me off. I made a villainous chuckle.</p>
<p>“Seriously though, I didn’t call you here to get in an argument.” Other me said a more serious tone, taking over his voice.</p>
<p>“Alrighty, so what’s up?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Well, things didn’t go exactly how I predicted they would,” He said before looking up to me. I gestured for him to go on.</p>
<p>“Well, for one thing when you retook control of the body. I expected this place to disappear, I guessed it was a temporary construct. I mean it only came into existence because you got pushed out of active control of our body, so I reason that when you regained control this whole mindscape would dissolve,” Other me explained.</p>
<p>“But, it clearly hasn’t,” I cut in.</p>
<p>“Yeah, exactly. It’s still here which is weird, but also we don’t know a lot about the workings of our inner mind so maybe this is normal,” Other me speculated.</p>
<p>“Let's say it stays around, does this become the place my mind goes whenever we are asleep? Like, now instead of dreaming or whatever sleep is will I always be awake inside here now?” I asked.</p>
<p>“No idea,” Other me shrugged.</p>
<p>“Okay, whatever we can figure it out later. What else do ya wanna talk about?” I asked.</p>
<p>“That was it mostly, just letting you know that we are going to be seeing a lot more of each other,” Other me replied.</p>
<p>“Fair enough, hey wait a second why haven’t I been overwhelmed with memories yet. I figured that when we blew the dam, things went back to how they used to be, but they didn’t. What's up with that?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Oh, that is a good question to which my only response is I have no idea. Initially, I supposed we would get flooded with memories after that stunt, but that didn’t happen because it seemed like our access to our flood of memories was a bit more restricted.” He mused.</p>
<p>“Like, we have normal function memory again?” I asked</p>
<p>“No, more like the structure that we the consciousness sit in recognized a lack of control and tampered down on the memories, while I’m still busy fixing things,” Other me answered.</p>
<p>“Huh, that's weird,” I said.</p>
<p>“Indeed,” Other me responded. We stood in silence, each of us staring at each other.</p>
<p>“So what's up with you and that Ino gal?” I inquired. Other me groaned. I laughed.</p>
<p>“No seriously, it’s odd. You seem to actually have something for her, but I really don’t have any opinion either which way?” I clarified. It was true, I honestly had no inkling why this other part of me seemed so hung up on a person I barely even knew. Other me fidgeted then spoke.</p>
<p>“Look, when you were fighting her for control something happened.”</p>
<p>“Something happened?” </p>
<p>“Yeah. It was weird.” Other Me trailed off.</p>
<p>“Weird how?” I asked. Other Me started to speak, stopped, then started again.</p>
<p>“It was like there was a two way melding of our and her mind,” He said hesitantly.</p>
<p>“Huh? I didn’t feel anything other than some vague mutual respect as I tried to kick her out, what the fuck are you talking about?” I asked fully flummoxed.</p>
<p>“You didn’t feel it because I was filtering it out, it was just a flood of impressions, fragmented thoughts, and feelings. It was weird. It only happened for a moment, but I swear for a moment there was some kind of mental connection,” Other me described.</p>
<p>“And now that you think you’ve mentally been linked with her you went full gaga? Let me remind you, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t experience nor remember any of whatever you're talking about right now? I don’t give a shit about this girl and somehow you, who is also me is totally lovestruck?” I ranted. It made no sense at all, maybe I was just nuts but I swear the Other me had totally lost his marbles.</p>
<p>“I know you don’t get it, because I’m keeping the memory of those impressions, feelings, and fragmented memories suppressed. I need to study what happened in more detail before I can state anything with any certainty.” Other Me soothed. I groaned.</p>
<p>“Okay, at least tell me what you do know, and before you ask no I don’t want you to unsuppress those memories. I’m quite happy not having girl problems on my platter along with the other massive heaping pile of shit that's already there.” I said.</p>
<p>“Fine, what I can say for certain is that she used a jutsu to take over our mind. That jutsu was designed to only take command of the motor and sensory areas of our brain leaving the memory and personality sections untouched, additionally there are safeguards in place to ensure there is no interaction between her mind and ours. However, because our mind is wired differently our memory section wires directly into our sensory section of our heads. We used this to flood her with memories to weaken her control of our mind so we could retake control. So because of this she experienced a full dosage of our memories. When this occurred, some safeguard on the jutsu failed and whatever barriers it created to ensure no interactions failed. During this time period some sort of two-way communication channel between her mind and us was formed, we received a variety of memories, impressions, and feelings. I would assume she received a similar grouping of information from us with it being much more memory dense. Anyway, the information we received from her came to me, I experienced it and filtered it from being experienced by you, before it then just went somewhere else that I don’t know about,” Other me explained.</p>
<p>“Wait, so whatever we got from her is just gone?” I asked bewildered.</p>
<p>“Kind of? I experienced it so we can remember it, but the actual information itself just vanished into thin air. Poof!” Other me made an exploding motion with his hands.</p>
<p>“Huh, that's weird,” I stated.</p>
<p>“Yeah, you can say that again,” Other Me said with a grimace.</p>
<p>“Well shit, so what do we do?” I asked.</p>
<p>“You do nothing, but focus on keeping us alive. I’ll take care of this situation, but I won’t be able to help as much with cipher in the new book. I have my hands full as is, you’re going to have to crack that on your own,” Other Me answered.</p>
<p>“Gotcha, anything else or are we done here?” I asked.</p>
<p>“That’s everything, you should be waking up soon anyways. See ya,” Other Me said as I felt my awareness slip back into the nothing of sleep.</p>
<p>---<br/>
September 30th Late Afternoon, 2016 RY<br/>
Uncharted Forest, 1 Days Travel from Honnobe<br/>
Campsite </p>
<p>Over the following six day Sasuke and I fell into a comfortable routine. Wake up, eat breakfast, travel during the day, stop in the late afternoon, set up camp, train, catch, and cook food, and then go to bed.</p>
<p>The only thing that changed from day to day was the training Sasuke put me through, in short he identified two main areas where I would have to improve to be even somewhat competent, these areas being taijutsu and ninjutsu. </p>
<p>Fortunately, Sasuke had a plan to help me rapidly learn these skills. His plan revolved around my perfect memory, and abusing the shit out of it to learn information as fast as possible. It was funny really, the Sharingan’s copying ability was really similar to my perfect memory. </p>
<p>For taijutsu, Sasuke would make me watch him go through a movement. Then, he would make me replicate it, but he would have me do it “frame-by-frame” where I would slowly move my body through the motions of whatever move I’m trying to copy. Sasuke would sometimes tell me to stop, and he’d manually adjust my footing, my stance, or any other numerous things that I would do wrong. The key would be that I would be able to memorize how each proper “frame” of the movement felt, so then I could move through those correct “frames” in rapid speed. </p>
<p>The result would be that I could copy Sasuke’s high level taijutsu moves very rapidly, so within a couple of hours I could perform almost any move he could, albeit with less fluidity. The real kicker was that I had no real built up instinct or understanding for hand to hand combat. I had to think about every single thing I did, because fighting was as foreign to me as football as to Sasuke. </p>
<p>So we would spar, in fact that's all we did the majority of the time. I got the concept in principle, I had no built up instincts for fighting, so I would fight a lot to get those instincts. It just sucked, I got the crap kicked out of me again and again. I may have had the same moves as Sasuke. It was like we both had complete kitchens, but he was a professional chef and I was a five year old. </p>
<p>I had to think about fighting, Sasuke just did it. It was one of the most profound skill gaps I had experienced in my short life. Sasuke was merciless, he would bob and weave around everything I threw at him before seeing a weakness and putting me in the dirt. It sucked, but I was learning. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When it came to ninjutsu, the skill gap between Sasuke and I was even wider. I knew three jutsu: The Clone Jutsu, the Substitution Jutsu, and the Transformation Jutsu. This was apparently totally inadequate according to Sasuke. </p>
<p>He planned to rectify this by making me learn new jutsu that he already knew, and by forcing me to refine the jutsu I already knew. In particular Sasuke wanted me to rapidly improve my Substitution and Transformation Jutsu. </p>
<p>So I had to practice these jutsu over and over and over. It wasn’t difficult, just really fucking boring.</p>
<p>Practicing the Transformation Jutsu I cycled through images of random people I had seen before, both real and fictional. I had to admit it was something to cycle through being Elvis, Darth Vader, and Richard Nixon in under a minute. </p>
<p>Sasuke was initially befuddled by the parade of wacky transformations, but he rapidly grew used to just writing my behavior off as ‘just the way things were’.</p>
<p>The Substitution Jutsu was way more boring to practice, but I did as I was told and substituted myself out for the log. I never could get a good answer out of Sasuke about why it was always a log or how the Jutsu actually worked. So I just threw those questions on the already massive TBD pile I had built mentally.</p>
<p>When it came to the new Jutsu, Sasuke picked out two in specific Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu and the Shadow Clone Jutsu. </p>
<p>Phoenix Flower Jutsu was apparently a simple ranged fire jutsu. You mix chakra into your outgoing breath which then turns into a number of small flying fireballs that fly at a target. The trajectory of small flying balls being alterable by direct commands from the user.  </p>
<p>I easily learned the hand seals, proper stance, and minimum distance for the jutsu, learning how to actually turn hand seals into action was a whole other matter. There were three main components to actually making the Jutsu work, converting my chakra into fire chakra, parceling that chakra into a number of distinct fireballs, and controlling the fireballs after I had spit them out. </p>
<p>At the moment I was able to barely convert my chakra into the fire chakra I needed, but parceling that chakra up into distinct packets and controlling it was beyond me. So my current attempts looked more like a misguided jet of fire that lost coherence a couple feet away from my mouth. </p>
<p>Fire Chakra was very unstable. So if it had no guidance or structure it would sort of evaporate away its energy. Sasuke assured me that when I was able to parcel up the chakra into distinct fireballs this problem would be solved. </p>
<p>The other jutsu, the Shadow Clone Jutsu, was a whole different omelet to crack. For one part, it was murderously expensive chakra wise. On top of an already high fixed cost to use, the jutsu also divided whatever remaining amount of chakra I had and split it between whatever number of clones I created. The upshot was that the clones were fully solid and capable of independent action, or at least that's how Sasuke had described them. </p>
<p>When I had asked Sasuke what it felt like to actually use jutsu he just shrugged. Sasuke may have known how to do it, but he had never wanted to use it. Further, questioning only earned me the answer that he had “Ideological conflicts” with using it, whatever the hell that meant.</p>
<p>These difficulties had prevented me from actually attempting the jutsu until I was fully rested and was sure I could get it right. Now I was rested and ready to give it a shot.</p>
<p>“You watching?” I asked Sasuke. Every time I would do jutsu training, Sasuke would watch with his Sharingan since it was capable of seeing the chakra flow through my body. This allowed him to see what I was doing with the chakra and give me advice. Sasuke nodded.</p>
<p>“Okay here we go,” I ran through the hand seals feeling the chakra inside me twist and fold into an unfamiliar shape. The constant flow of warm energy inside me quickened into a torrent of power that surged into the construct twisted within me, as if the air was filling a pre-made balloon animal. The construct swelled into shape consuming more energy than anything I had done to date. </p>
<p>I almost panicked at the amount of energy it demanded, the construct was voracious in its appetite for energy. But before I could get concerned enough to abort, the constructs draw on my energy slackened. It was ready.</p>
<p>“Looking good?” I said in between clenched teeth.</p>
<p>“Do it,” Sasuke answered. </p>
<p>I reached within myself and grabbed ahold of the chakra construct, it was as simple as pushing it out and forward of me.</p>
<p>“Shadow Clone Jutsu!” I yelled as the mass of energy left my body and became something new and distinct from me.  A cloud of white smoke popped in front of me. </p>
<p>The smoke cleared. In front of me stood a person; curly red hair, green eyes, pale skin, and a defined frame, draped in torn up dirt stained clothes. It was another Roger Walker. The doppelganger stared right back at me, before looking down and examining his hands.</p>
<p>“Huh that's neat,” the clone noted.</p>
<p>“Concur,” I replied automatically. Silence fell. </p>
<p>“Sooo, are you able to think?” I asked.</p>
<p>“I think so, or at least it feels like I’m thinking,” the clone responded.</p>
<p>“Hmm, what's 8 plus 8?” </p>
<p>“16,” the clone answered immediately.</p>
<p>“Okay, so you can at least do basic math. Can you remember any of my memories?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Our memories,” the clone wagged a finger at me. “And yes.”</p>
<p>“Okay, if that's the case then what's the first letter on the 5th line on the first page of the new book we got?” I asked. The clone didn’t even hesitate.</p>
<p>“Q.” Which was correct.</p>
<p>“Huh, cool.” </p>
<p>“You and your clone are weird,” Sasuke said.</p>
<p>“Up yours.” We snapped simultaneously.</p>
<p>“Still weird,” Sasuke mumbled.</p>
<p>“So now what?” The clone asked. I shrugged; the clone shrugged in return. I kicked a rock. Sasuke did nothing per usual.</p>
<p>“Holy Shit!” The clone yelled causing me to flinch.</p>
<p>“What?” I asked.</p>
<p>“I just figured out the cipher on the first page! It's so simple, how did I not see it before!” The clone explained, hopping up and down. </p>
<p>“Really?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Yes, it's so simple! What you have to do is-” My clone's explanation was cut off by a loud cracking noise. My eyes darted up only to see a large tree limb detach itself from the trunk and crash downwards. </p>
<p>“Uh oh,” the brilliant clone stated before being crushed. The clone vanished into a puff of white smoke. </p>
<p>My jaw hung open. I looked over to Sasuke, whose mouth also was doing its best impression of a bug catcher. </p>
<p>“Did that really just happen?” Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>“I think so,” I replied.</p>
<p>“Do you know what he figured out?” Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>“No, I mean he popped before he could tell me anyth-” I spoke before my brain caught up to my mouth and I realized I did know what he did. </p>
<p>The first page was another simple Caesar Cipher, when I had seen numbers in the page I had assumed they were encoded text. Instead they were actually coordinates, not pieces of the text cipher. If we took out the numbers and used the simple Caesar Cipher offset the text was easily decoded.</p>
<p>‘If you have gotten your hands on this that means you’ve silenced Albert. Go to the listed coordinates to find real answers that aren't tainted by that madman. There you should be able to find the answers you’re probably searching for, either way good luck!’</p>
<p>“Roger? You in there?” The question cut me out of my internal musings.</p>
<p>“Huh?” I said dumbly snapping back into reality.</p>
<p>“You were in the middle of something and then just stopped talking.” Sasuke said, the implied question hanging in the air. </p>
<p>“Uhhh,” I droned.</p>
<p>“The cipher?” Sasuke prompted.</p>
<p>“Oh right, so I may actually know how to solve it,” I said excitedly.</p>
<p>“Didn’t the clone die before it told us anything?” </p>
<p>“Yeah, but I know what he figured out…” I said trailing off as my statement prompted a new question. How did I know what my clone knew? He died before he could say anything so obviously, there was no way for him to communicate that the numbers in the cipher were coordinates not text. Yet, I somehow knew that implicitly when he popped. How did that happen?</p>
<p>“Uh Roger?” Sasuke asked a look of concern tracing his face.</p>
<p>“Huh?” I replied realizing that I had again fallen into my own head. Sasuke only raised a single eyebrow in response.</p>
<p>“Oh right, how I know what the clone knew,” I mumbled, before a lightbulb went on in my head and I snapped my fingers.</p>
<p>“I just got an idea,” I said excitedly snapping my fingers as a new theory for why I knew the cipher crystallized in my head. I ran through the hand seals and performed the Shadow Clone Jutsu again.</p>
<p>“Okay, you two go behind a tree. Sasuke then you whisper something to clone who will then disappear,” I explained. Sasuke did so without complaint, and followed my clone behind a tree. When a puff of smoke erupted from behind the tree, I knew at once my answer. Sasuke returned his expression one in skepticism.</p>
<p>“No I’m not insane, and yes I do think we need some food besides hunted meat,” I said with a grin. The eyes of Sasuke widening was confirmation enough that I was right. </p>
<p>“So let’s say after we go to Taki, we go where these new coordinates take us?” I suggested. Sasuke nodded in agreement.</p>
<p>-------<br/>
<b>October 1st Midday, 2016 RY<br/>
Honnobe<br/>
Tsunoda’s office </b></p>
<p>We arrived at Honnobe in the morning and quickly got out bearings. Using the stored memory of the organizational ledges, I quickly figured out where we needed to go. It was surprisingly easy to navigate to the building that had been marked as the regional operations office, to my slight surprise I was able to get both Sasuke and myself inside by mentioning my own name. We were quickly shuffled through the building up into what was clearly Tsunoda’s office. </p>
<p>He was apparently finishing up some other business, but we were seated on a comfy couch and set up with steaming mugs of coffee and pastries. Having eaten nothing except wild game for the past week, we gobbled up the pastries with gusto. It was as I was vacuuming up the last pastry that the door into the office swung open.</p>
<p>I swiveled my head towards the door. Before me stood the lanky form of what had been my first friend in this new world, Tsunoda. He looked at me as if I was the Ghost of Christmas Past. I stood up</p>
<p>“Rog,” He said as he darted forward and enveloped me in a firm hug that I hadn't been expecting. He gave me a firm squeeze then released me and stepped back</p>
<p>“I can’t believe it. All of sudden all correspondence stopped, no supplies, no orders, and no men. It was only because of a single man managing to get close enough to see that the fort was under Shinobi control. I assumed everyone was dead, that the whole organization was compromised. We went underground for a bit, but when no follow attacks against us occurred, we didn’t know what to make of it. That's all beside the point, how did you survive?” Tsunoda rambled.</p>
<p>“Old Salt, we had just finished training in the woods when we returned to find the fort in flames. Old Salt ran in and burned all the ledgers and records before coming back out and telling me to run for my life.” I explain inconspicuously omitting the fact that I was the one now in possession of the master ledger. “He gave me this,” I pulled out the golden weasel necklace and showed it to Tsunoda. He nodded in understanding. </p>
<p>“So who are you and how did you come to travel with our knucklehead of an accountant?” Tsunoda directed the question to Sasuke. Now initially we figured we would have to lie about Sasuke’s identity, but after more thought on the matter we just decided to say fuck it. We already had a new set of coordinates we had to go to, so it wasn’t like we were going to be sticking around for dinner.</p>
<p>“I am Sasuke Uchiha, and your knucklehead accountant saved me from Orochimaru twice,” Sasuke said in a nearly flat tone. </p>
<p>Tsunoda’s face switching from good cheer to disbelief to outright horror in under 5 seconds was truly a sight to behold.</p>
<p>“D-did you Sasuke Uchiha?” Tsunoda stammered. Sasuke nodded.</p>
<p>“Wait, that was you guys!” Tsunoda's eyes snapped back to me.</p>
<p>“What did we do?” I asked playing dumb.</p>
<p>“Oh you know, just fighting a running battle in the middle of a busy town with both a Leaf village retrieval squad and Orochimaru the Sanin! The entire criminal underworld is an uproar, all the spies and informants within a 200 mile radius of Kohama have been put on high alert to actively search you guys out. I know of at least 6 different villages that have covert team’s scouring the countryside and cities looking for you two! It’s one of the biggest manhunts in recent history!” Tsunoda bemoaned.</p>
<p>“Oh, huh I didn’t realize we drew that much heat,” I chuckled.</p>
<p>“How could you not!” </p>
<p>“We’ve been traveling through the forest and have avoided civilization for the entirety of our trip.” Sasuke answered.</p>
<p>“Hmm, yeah that would make a bit more sense. So that begs a new question, why did you guys come here?” Tsunoda asked.</p>
<p>“We need some help figuring out where some coordinates point,” I answered. Tsunoda only raised his eyebrows.</p>
<p>“Let me get my map,” Tsunoda said moving over to a filing cabinet and rummaging through it.</p>
<p>“Ah here’s my biggest map,” Tsunoda said, bringing over the map and laying it across his desk. Sasuke and I both stepped up to look at it.</p>
<p>“So what are these coordinates?” Tsunoda asked.</p>
<p>I gave him the set of numbers I had memorized.</p>
<p>“Jeez, that’s really far out east, definitely out past the Mist Village”</p>
<p>“Does the place even exist?” I asked looking skeptically</p>
<p>“Yeah, it does. It’s called Greenwater Lagoon, it's an island nation of apparently very odd folks. I’ve met a guy who claimed to be from there and he certainly fit the profile of being odd,” Tsunoda mused.</p>
<p>“Okay, so how would we get there?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Hmm, your best would probably to depart from Biramoto Port, go north to Kingdom of Snow, and then hop eastwards, while doing your best to avoid port stopovers in either lightning country or water country. Frankly, all you need to worry about is getting to a port that’s east of Fire, but not controlled by Water country. But, what I can definitely say is that you go to Biramoto Port and head north to clear the influence of Fire and Lightning country,” Tsunoda said tracing the route with his finger.</p>
<p>“Is it easy to get a ship in Biramoto Port?” Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>“Oh yeah, in fact I have a guy I can recommend specifically, he’s worked with us for a long time. His name is Motobe Atasuke, he owns a bar on the east side of the city wharf. Tell him, I sent you and that it's one of his many payments for the ‘Double Shot Disaster.’ That’ll get you as far as Snow country, and after that I think you guys can sign up to work for passage, to get the rest of the way you’re going,” Tsunoda explained.</p>
<p>“Thanks Tsunoda,” I said.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry about it, I’m just glad that you’re okay,” He patted my shoulder. </p>
<p>“So we can head out for Biramoto Port tomorrow and catch up on old times tonight?” I asked. </p>
<p>“No, you guys need to get out of here now,” Tsunoda shook his head.</p>
<p>“But we just got here, it can’t be that unsafe to spend a single night,” I said mildly hurt at our curt dismissal. Tsunoda shook his head.</p>
<p>“No you don’t understand this city crawls with ears and eyes, I’d guess you’ve already been spotted, and your location already relayed to those who have an interest in you two. You kids have to go now. We’re already cutting it close as is,” Tsunoda said moving over to his desk grabbing a scrap of paper, he scribbled something on it before returning. He handed it to me.</p>
<p>“Here’s the forwarding box to send me letters and packages. No matter where I go, I’ve ensured this box will always get mail to me. The crime world is in an uproar over Kawaguchi’s elimination and things might get a bit chaotic. I’ve prepared to distance myself and my people away from the coming chaos. But, I want you to write to me when you reach your destination and you’re safe. Got it?” Tsunoda grabbed my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. I nodded.</p>
<p>“I’m serious. I’m worried about whatever thing you’ve gotten yourself caught up in, but I trust that you’ll make it out okay. Just keep safe, you got me?” Tsunoda said, his eyes locked onto me.</p>
<p>“I got you,” I squeaked out, my voice cracking a bit. Tsunoda smiled, and gave my shoulder another squeeze. </p>
<p>“Good, now I won’t keep you kids any longer. You need to put distance between yourself and Honnobe. By nightfall hunters will be crawling all over this place, so run fast and run far. Keep off the main roads and stay smart,” Tsunoda said before letting go of my shoulder and stepping back. </p>
<p>“Okay. I’ll be safe and I promise I’ll write you the first chance I get,” Sasuke was already standing and gave me a small nod. He started walking to the door. I followed. </p>
<p>“Good luck, Roger.”</p>
<p>“You too,” I said with a half-smile as I looked backwards. Tsunoda was looking at me, and he smiled. I smiled back. </p>
<p>-----------<br/>
<b>October 6th Night, 2016 RY<br/>
Biramoto Port<br/>
Seaside Pub</b></p>
<p>We departed Honnobe in good order and spent the night unbothered in the forest. We continued our daily routine of traveling in the day and training during dawn and dusk while we made our way to Biramoto Port. We were unbothered during our 5 day trip by either animal or human foes. </p>
<p>We arrived at Biramoto Port at the crack of dawn, the sun kissing the horizon as the birds chirped. We sauntered into town with high spirits. The town itself was rather average, but this made finding the wharf and specific bar easy. To our chagrin the doors of the place were locked, so we detoured to a breakfast eatery. It was the first non-hunted meal we had in almost 2 weeks of being on the run. I nearly cried in joy as I scarfed down a platter of fried eggs and sausage, washed down with a hot cup of coffee. It was a small thing that made life less hell.</p>
<p>After our breakfast we returned back to the bar to find its doors open and the owner inside.  Motobe Atasuke, was a short pudgy man, but he had a jolly demeanor and was happy to help us after we described our situation and the instructions Tsunoda had given us. In short order, Motobe had locked his bar and had taken us down the wharf to a medium sized cargo vessel. He found the first officer, who in turn found the captain. Motobe explained our situation to the captain and who was paying out the favor to transport us. Luckily, the captain had no problem with transporting us and instructed us to show up at this berth at the crack of dawn tomorrow. The ship would continue to take on cargo and supplies today, and depart tomorrow.</p>
<p>After having sorted out the details of our transit, Sasuke and I spent the rest of the day running errands around the port town in preparation of our journey. </p>
<p>For one part, our clothes were absolutely torn to bits. So we made it a point to equip ourselves with brand new clothes. Since we were technically on the run neither of us bought anything flashy. So we both loaded up with new shirts, jackets, pants, and shorts. Along with our new clothing, we also loaded up on travel gear. This included backpacks, sleeping bags, tarps, and other useful equipment. Our shopping spree lasted the whole day with us having made a dent in my money supply, but on the brightside at least we had toothbrushes again, so it was good with the bad. It was nighttime when we had finished our spending spree.</p>
<p>I found a pub that served dinner and we claimed a booth to eat and talk. It was near the back of the restaurant, so we had plenty of privacy and were generally out of the way. It had been a busy, but dull day so it was a shock when someone slid into the booth besides me.</p>
<p>“So either this is what you kids consider fine dining or secretive dining, both of which you’re terribly mistaken,” an aged voice said to the left of me. My head snapped up to examine the stranger. </p>
<p>He was an aged man, he had long white hair, and red lines traced downwards from his eyes. He wore a forehead protector with an odd symbol.</p>
<p>“Who are you?” I asked. He chuckled.</p>
<p>“I’m Jiraiya the great toad sage!” He boasted with a laugh. My eyes darted to Sasuke, he was tense, and his Sharingan was activated. </p>
<p>“Calm down Uchiha, I’m not here to drag you back to the leaf,” the now self-identified Jiraiya said.</p>
<p>“Wait, you work with the Leaf village?” I asked.<br/>
“You’re Uchiha friend should be able to confirm it,” Jiraiya tilted his head at Sasuke. I glanced over to Sasuke, our eyes met, and he gave me a curt nod.</p>
<p>“Okay, so you're from the Leaf village, but if you’re not here to take us back then what are you here for?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Now hold your horses, I’m starving, and I would think you kids are as well. Let's get some food first before we get down to business. Plus, in the meantime this means you guys can tell me what your side of the story is, and in turn I can pay for dinner,” Jiraiya said jovially. He waved over a serving girl, who shuffled over. </p>
<p>During this quick lapse in Jiraiya's attention, I snapped my head to focus on Sasuke. He raised an eyebrow. I titled my head at Jiraiya, pointed at my mouth, then Jiraiya before doing a thumbs up/thumbs down. I wanted to know if Sasuke had any opinion on being open with Jiraiya. </p>
<p>Sasuke only shrugged in response before making a small thumbs up. I guess it made no difference what we told him, so might as well not introduce complications of trying to lie.</p>
<p>We all ordered big platters of food and drinks. The serving girl was quick with our drink’s sake for Jiraiya, non-alcoholic juices for Sasuke and I. </p>
<p>“So tell me what the hell happened and why are you guys here now?” Jiraiya asked. So we told him everything. I started off with my tale, leaving out no details. Surprisingly Jiraiya accepted the fact that I was from a different place with surprisingly little shock. Once, we got to the point where I ran into Sasuke, Sasuke took up the telling of the tale. He explained how the Sound Four had infiltrated the village, beat him silly, and then offered him the deal of advancing his cursed seal for tutelage under Orochimaru. </p>
<p>Our food arrived and we commenced eating, I picked up the story from that point and detailed everything that happened up until we had arrived here, with Sasuke chiming in to clarify or add details. By the time the story was over we had cleared out plates. I was still hungry though, so I got a big fried calamari appetizer. Jiraiya had gone through 2 bottles of Sake and was now working on his 3rd. </p>
<p>“So that's basically everything. Any questions?” I asked.</p>
<p>“So did you really break the cursed seal?” Jiraiya asked, looking at me.</p>
<p>“Yeah?” I answered.</p>
<p>“How did you do it?” He asked with a surprising intensity behind his question.</p>
<p>“Do you really want to know?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” He answered with finality. </p>
<p>I launched into an abbreviated explanation of what I discovered about the cursed seal, and how I had managed to use its self-repairing properties as my way to compromise and destroy it. I detailed the usage of unbalanced chakra, the usage of the chakra flare stack, and the chakra tap. Jiraiya asked frequent questions which I did my best to answer. By the end of it, Jiraiya did a low whistle before emptying his bottle of Sake.</p>
<p>“Damn, if that's all true then you are a real crafty kid. Orochimaru must be tearing his hair out trying to figure out how you did it,” Jiraiya laughed.</p>
<p>“He did seem interested in knowing that, I told him to get bent,” I boasted. This caused Jiraiya to laugh uproariously, drawing the attention of other patrons. He raised his hand to call over the serving girl.</p>
<p>“Excuse me dear, can you get me another Sake. Also, can you get these two fine young men a pair of Ale’s,” Jiraiya asked. The serving girl looked over at us, then back to Jiraiya.</p>
<p>“Are you sure mister?” </p>
<p>“I’m sure, here I’m sure this will make it worth the trouble,” Jiraiya said while slipping a pair of coins into the serving girl’s hand.</p>
<p>“I’ll have your drinks out at once,” She said with a cheerful smile as she darted off to get beverages. Jiraiya turned back towards us.</p>
<p>“I promised myself that I would buy anyone who could flummox that slithery bastard to ruin his day. You not only broke his stupid seal, but you also kept Sasuke out of his grasp. So for that you guys have earned two free drinks off me. Wait, you guys have had alcohol before though right?” Jiraiya said looking between the two of us.</p>
<p>“A bit on holidays with my parents, and once on a camping trip with my cousins,” I said. Sasuke shook his head in the negative.</p>
<p>“Well, youth is about learning and it's probably time you guys learn about the wonders and follies of alcohol,” Jiraiya said jovially. The serving girl soon returned with another sake bottle and two steins of frothy beer.</p>
<p>I grabbed the glass mug. The glass was cool in my hand.</p>
<p>“Cheers, to both you kids managing to make it this far and not die,” Jiraiya said, raising his cup of sake. I raised my mug, Sasuke cautiously raised his and we all clicked our cups together. Jiraiya took a pull from his sake cup and smiled looking at both of us, seeing which one of us would take a sip of our ale first.<br/>
I took the challenge and took a hearty swig of my mug. The bitterness and frothiness were similar to that of the beer my 17 year-old cousin John got me.</p>
<p>We were up at my cousin's cabin for the summer. John had a girlfriend, named Annie, whose family also had a cabin but on the other side of the lake. It was a warm summer night and the parents had already gone to bed, so John wanted to go see her. But, he wanted me to go along to be the front paddler of the canoe. So to get me to go he bribed me with a stolen 6 pack of beer and the promise that his girlfriend had a little sister who was my age and was cute. </p>
<p>Being the rational safety conscious 13 year old that I was, I agreed to go before John had even finished his spiel to convince me. We escaped the cabin, pilfering the beer and canoe in good order. We managed to get across the lake with good speed and soon were hanging out with the girls. They had a firepit with a small fire crackling inside. John and Annie set us up with marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate, before they disappeared to go check on something.</p>
<p>Annie’s little sister was named Maya. She was short with curly red hair, freckles, a button nose, and brown eyes. She was a bit shy and quiet, but also she was cute and funny when she did speak. We took sips from the beers we had been given and made S’mores, while the insects sang and the fire crackled. Our hands even grazed each other a couple times, and I could swear she stared at me for longer than normal. </p>
<p>It all came to an end when the lights on the cabin went on and we heard Maya’s dad yelling. Maya being the quick thinker hid me and the beer under the wood pile, making sure to pull the tarp over.</p>
<p>When her dad came over, asking what she was doing and if she had seen anyone. Maya explained that no she hadn’t seen anyone out tonight, she was just down here making S’mores and listening to the beauty of nature. Her dad somehow bought it and told her to not stay out too much longer. An eternity later Maya came over and let me out from under the wood tarp. </p>
<p>She told me I had to go and that my cousin John had ran down the lakefront so I would probably have to go pick him up. She helped me pack up my stuff and waved to me as I paddled the canoe out to go find John. Who I found hiding out in a bunch of cattails? We laughed about what had happened, finished the beers, and paddled home. We saw Maya and Annie a couple more times over the summer, but that was the sweetest memory I had of the summer.</p>
<p>I would’ve gone back to that cabin this summer had I not been transported to this world. I wonder if I could’ve seen Maya again.</p>
<p>“Roger?” Sasuke’s concerned voice cut into my musings.</p>
<p>“Yeah?” I answered, blinking my eyes.</p>
<p>“You okay?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I was just remembering something, don’t worry about it,” I answered.</p>
<p>“Geez kid, how does beer set you off like that?” Jiraiya probed. I saw Sasuke shoot a glare at him.</p>
<p>“It’s nothing, just some childhood stuff. Don’t worry about it. Sasuke I think it’s your turn now?” I said redirecting the conversation. Sasuke looked at his glass suspiciously.</p>
<p>“Come on, it’s just a little beer,” Jiraiya egged on. Sasuke shrugged and took a sip.</p>
<p>His face puckered up and he slammed his eyes shut. I laughed. Jiraiya laughed. Sasuke swallowed then gagged. We laughed even harder. </p>
<p>“It never gets old,” Jiraiya said, flicking a tear away from his eyes.</p>
<p>“God, you should’ve seen the look on your face,” I said in between laughing gasps. Sasuke just groaned. Eventually, our laughter settled down.</p>
<p>“So what do you boys plan to do now? I mean every village by now knows that the last Uchiha is out and about and will stop at nothing to gain possession of the Sharingan. Do you have a plan to not get caught up in the net of others?” Jiraiya asked.</p>
<p>I glanced towards Sasuke who gave me a slight nod.</p>
<p>“We are planning on leaving the five nations for a while, we have a destination in mind that might keep us out of the way,” I offered up.</p>
<p>“Oh do you now?” He said his voice dripping in condescension.</p>
<p>“Yeah we do,” I answered, a bit defensively.</p>
<p>“Does the Greenwater Lagoon ring a bell?” I asked. Jiraiya’s eyebrows shot up.</p>
<p>“In passing, yes. But, I’ve never been there. Why do you ask?” He inquired.</p>
<p>“We have reasoning to believe that another link to whatever we found in the valley is connected to those islands, and that there may be something that we have to stop. We don’t know yet,” Jiraiya’s expression darkened.</p>
<p>“Is this you saying there might be more people like that guy, you guys fought under the valley?” </p>
<p>“Yes, we think so. So that's why we are going there, plus it’s out of the way so we should be fine until the heat here cools down.” I explained.</p>
<p>“Is that why you are going?” Jiraiya directed the question towards Sasuke.</p>
<p>“Yes,” He said with a nod. Jiraiya sighed.</p>
<p>“Well, that’s what I had hoped and feared,” Jiraiya said, taking another pull from his cup. Sasuke and I looked at each other before looking back to Jiraiya. </p>
<p>“I came out here in part to confirm you were free of Orochimaru’s control, but also to see if you kids would be able to keep out of anyone's grasp for the duration, until it's safe for you to return.” Jiraiya explained.</p>
<p>“Why would it not be safe right now?” Sasuke asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.</p>
<p>“Well, your little stunt has thrown the entire Leaf village establishment into an uproar. If you were to return right now, I can’t guarantee you would remain free and not under the power of anyone. Some established powers would prefer to see certain safeguards be put in place to ensure you can’t ever take such an escapade again. Tsunade and myself are strongly against this, but at this point it’s still a possibility that she could be overruled. Which is why I’m happy you kids have a safe destination in mind. Because, it would be best if you two don’t return to the village for a year or two. Tsunade needs time to get established and consolidate her power, so that when you do return she can ensure no drastic measures are taken to ensure your future loyalty. Do you understand what I’m getting at?” Jiraiya asked, looking between Sasuke and me.</p>
<p>“Crystal clear,” Sasuke responded in an icy tone.</p>
<p>“Look, I know you still have your disagreements with the village, but staying out of Orochimaru’s control is probably the single best thing that could’ve happened to you. He’s a sick man and he would’ve twisted you in ways you can’t even imagine. But, I get it you don’t trust me which is while I’ll throw you guys a bone. I once fought a guy from the Greenwater Lagoon and man he was a tough son of a bitch, he did claim to be a disciple of a famous teacher. He claimed he was the favorite student of a guy named Chiron.” I inhaled a sip of beer and started coughing. The name Chiron sent me spinning in a mental train wreck. There was no way it could be that ‘Chiron’ right? Both Jiraiya and Sasuke shot me confused glances. I waved away their concern.</p>
<p>“It just went down the wrong way,” I wheezed in between my coughs.</p>
<p>“Okay, but what I’m saying is that if you guys can find this Chiron and have him teach you, I’m sure you’ll become very strong. The man I fought used strange techniques and weapons, but he was so good he nearly killed me. I never saw him after that, but if you guys can even reach a half of what he achieved you’ll both be very strong,” Jiraiya said.</p>
<p>“Makes sense,” Sasuke mumbled.</p>
<p>“Additionally, I have a gift for you kids. Here,” Jiraiya took out a small notebook with an intricate pattern on the cover. He placed it on the table.</p>
<p>“What is it?” I asked.</p>
<p>“It's a far-writing book.” He answered.</p>
<p>“What's a far-writing book?” I followed up.</p>
<p>“It’s a book that allows whatever you write in the pages to be transferred to another book that it’s paired with, no matter how far away the books are from each other,” Jiraiya explained.</p>
<p>“You want us to write in it to communicate with you?” Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>“Yes, I want to get updates, so I know you kids are okay.” </p>
<p>“What's in it for us?” Sasuke asked.</p>
<p>“I can be almost anywhere in the world within a couple of days, so if you guys get into trouble I can bail you out if you write to me. Additionally, if we stay in communications I can report to Tsunade that you guys are not-rouge, but just assets in the field. Which will make it a lot easier for you guys to return to the Leaf when things have calmed down. Finally, I can pass on information I get about certain other rogue Uchiha ninja,” Jiraiya said, wiggling his eyebrows.</p>
<p>“We’ll take it,” Sasuke said immediately. </p>
<p>“Good, I think that takes care of all the pressing business. Oh yeah have you kids gotten accommodations yet?” We shook our heads at Jiraiya's question.</p>
<p>“Good, I got two rooms at a nearby hotel. You guys will stay in one of them, I’ll make sure you don’t get taken in the night by the swarms of ninja that are out hunting for you two,” Jiraiya said. We both nodded in agreement. </p>
<p>The rest of the time at the pub was spent eating our snacks and drinking our liquor before we all retired to the hotel for the night. We slept unbothered that night. The next morning Sasuke and I boarded our ship for our journey to snow country.</p>
<p>----<br/>
<b>Side Story:Dreaming a New Tomorrow<br/></b>



<b>Date:Unknown</b><br/>
<b>Location Unknown</b></p>
<p>
  <b></b>
</p>
<p>
  <b></b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was a warm sunny day; the birds were chirping, and the wind was blowing. Ino sat on the shoulders of a man she knew as her father. They stood among throngs of other people all who were watching an indistinct tall white and orange object.</p>
<p>“And the handoff to Atlantis’s onboard computers. Atlantis now in control of the countdown,” a loud voice announced. That confused her, so she tapped on the head of her father.</p>
<p>“Daddy, what does that mean?” She asked, her voice high pitched and childish.</p>
<p>“It means that now the rocket is in charge of when it flies, not the ground base,” the deep voice of her father answered.</p>
<p>“Oh,” she replied, but before she could ask a new question the announcing voice spoke again.</p>
<p>“Firing chain is armed. Sound suppression system is active. T minus 10,” A wave of excitement ran through the crowd, and she felt a small tingle build in her fingers.</p>
<p>“Nine. Eight.” The crowd spoke along with the announced voice.</p>
<p>“Seven. Six. Five.” A loud roar started to drown out the announcing voice. A white cloud exploded around the white structure.</p>
<p>“Four. Three. Two. One. Zero. Liftoff of the Space Shuttle Atlantis!” The crowd went wild cheering and clapping. </p>
<p>In the distance the white and orange object began to rise under a pillar of bright fire. Ino’s father was cheering and clapping. She was cheering as the white and orange object rode the pillar of fire into the sky.</p>
<p>“Atlantis is on its way to the International Space Station; Atlantis is now into alignmen-” A deafening rumbling that seemed to reverberate and beat at her skin overtook her. Her ears hurt, but she kept clapping as the object soared into the sky. Ino could hear nothing but the roaring rumble of the object as it pierced through several thin clouds. </p>
<p>The rumble died down as the object climbed ever higher.</p>
<p>“Fifty-five seconds into the flight, all systems operating normally. Atlantis at 900miles per hour, 6 miles altitude, 9 miles downrange.” The object seemed to start going more sideways rather than upwards. This worried Ino but nobody else seemed to notice. </p>
<p>Ino continued to watch as the object became more and more distant as it headed towards its destination, space. She wanted to go there too, to go among the stars and the planets.</p>
<p>“Isn’t that amazing Rog?” Her father asked, excitement tinging his voice. She was about to agree when something stopped her. Rog? Who was Rog? Ino reached up and grabbed a lock of hair, it was curly. She pulled it down to see. It was red.</p>
<p>The world fell apart.</p>
<p>“Guh!” Ino gasped as her eyes shot open and she sat bolt upright in bed. Her eyes darted around taking in the view of her bedroom. She fell back into bed. Her heart pounding in her chest and her breathing ragged.</p>
<p>It had been a dream. One of the many dreams she had been suffering from ever since she had returned from the mission to retrieve Sasuke. Every time she seemed to live out a memory of the boy whose body she had taken over. </p>
<p>Her father had hypothesized that this was her mind's way of processing the vast amount of information that had been dumped into it all at once. This was in addition to the other weird things that had started to happen to her. </p>
<p>Sometimes she would find herself humming tunes that she didn’t know. Other times she would have images flash in her mind in response to some word she heard or sight she saw. Perhaps the worst was when she found herself using words of a language she didn’t know. It only made people look at her weird, when she started hissing in a weird language whenever she stubbed a toe.</p>
<p>“I need some fresh air,” She said to herself as she rolled out of bed. It was becoming a habit for her in recent times to go up to her roof when she couldn’t sleep. Ino glanced over to her wall, pasted on it were sheets of paper with a variety of drawings. </p>
<p>That was a thing her dad had recommended for her to do when she started suffering from the dreams, to draw out the scenes or striking elements of the dreams. So now the wall was covered in a variety of drawings ranging from a flag with stripes and stars on it, to a group of men wearing silly uniforms and helmets throwing an oblong shaped object. The most striking of them all was of a human shaped figure standing on a grey cratered surface, the figure is in a bulky white suit with a reflective visor down. </p>
<p>Ino shook her head, and walked over to her window. Throwing it open she was able to scamper up the wall of her house to the tiled roof. She walked to the top and stared up at the full moon that shone down light on the village.</p>
<p>It was a beautiful sight, but it caused something to stir in her something that she had only recently discovered. A deep ravenous hunger turned to fire, a desire to win, a desire to go beyond. It was hard to explain, but she wanted to go to the moon. She wanted to go to new places, to do things no-one else had before. For the first time in her life, her sight was set on something beyond the village and those in it. She didn’t know how to explain it, but she did know that she wanted more out of her life.</p>
<p>She reached up and tried to grab the moon. Annoyingly, it stayed where it was, and she was left with just an empty hand. She frowned.</p>
<p>Something in her had changed, there was a new piece inside her that howled for her to win no matter what. It was a novel feeling, to have such a deep desire to win. Whatever had happened inside that boy’s head, she had left with something new as a part of her. Whether it would be a good or bad thing in the long run was something she didn’t know. </p>
<p>“You win this time, you won’t get so lucky next time,” She said to herself as she stared at the bright orb in the sky.</p>
<p>What she did know about this new part of her is that it would be one hell of a ride wherever she was headed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Annnnd that's a wrap for another chapter! You would not believe how quickly I was able to get out the majority of this chapter before spending two weeks on a single scene, ugh. Also I havent started rolling out the new addendums to end of every chapter and doing edits to old chapters whoops.</p>
<p>Difficulties aside I hope you enjoyed this chapter for its more character interaction focus. I hope to start ramping up character interactions more and more as the pace of events can slow down slightly.</p>
<p>Moving ahead I do plan to have Sasuke and Roger actively do stuff during the timeskip era, though I plan the majority of events to occur in the new little area I’m creating. I hope you all enjoy it, I’m doing my best to try and cook up something moderately unique. It is my hope that i can use this time and space to mould Sasuke and Roger into more interesting people before they re-enter the standard Naruto plot, though maybe some elements of the plot may come to them.</p>
<p>Finally, I cannot thank you enough for continuing to read what I write. Though, to be honest I’m hoping more folks review. Reviews are probably the best fuel to keep me writing, but also don’t feel compelled to do so. You enjoying this is reward enough. Thank you!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Author's Note: This is the inciting element to a story I hope to write that will be able to walk the fine line of OC’s falling into a new world without upsetting the balance of story events too much, while also allowing the OC’s protagonist to cut out their own niche. I will do my best to try and keep the characters as close to what they are in canon, though I will surely make missteps. I will try to introduce my own setting elements and total settings, however I can promise you that it will not break into the level of pure power fantasy or wish fulfillment that author introduced elements tend to lean into. Overall though I hope to create a decent work that will both entertain and prompt readers to think. I hope I succeed. The first chapter should be posted within 3-6 hours of the Prologue going live, it will introduce the Protagonist and get him on the path of his adventure.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>